Gwendoline Riley was born in London in 1979. She is the author of My Phantoms, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize; of First Love, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction; and of Cold Water, Sick Notes, Joshua Spassky, and Opposed Positions. She has also won a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award, and has been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2018, The Times Literary Supplement named her as one of the twenty best British and Irish novelists working today.