Susan Elderkin

Susan Elderkin (born 1968 in Crawley) is an English author of two critically acclaimed novels, her first, Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains won a Betty Trask Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, her second, The Voices was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She was one of Granta Magazine's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and won the 2007 Society of Authors Travel Award.

Elderkin grew up in Leatherhead, Surrey and studied English at Downing College, Cambridge then an MA on the UEA Creative Writing Course taught by Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain. She went on to become a travel writer, journalist and reviewer, mainly for the Financial Times and to teach creative writing herself at Goldsmith's College, Birkbeck, University of London, City University London, the Arvon Foundation and Manchester University. She has also worked as an ice-cream seller and taught English at a Slovakian shoe factory. She lives between Somerset and America with her partner and young son and is working on adapting her first novel for film. She is a bibliotherapist at The School of Life and is currently writing a book called The Novel Cure with fellow therapist Ella Berthoud which will prescribe novels to read to aid in various ailments.