I was born in Corby, Northamptonshire, in 1960 and educated at Beanfield Comprehensive and the University of East Anglia. I graduated from UEA with a BA in English & American Studies in 1983 and an MA in Creative Writing in 1985. My teachers on the MA were Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.

I returned to UEA as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow in 2002 and joined the faculty as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing in 2004. I later became a Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Creative Writing programme, and retired in 2023.

My first novel Pig was published in 1994 and won a Betty Trask Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, The Authors' Club First Novel Award, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Prize. It was shortlisted for five other awards. 

Common Ground (1996) and Crustaceans (2000) both received Arts Council bursaries. What I Know was the recipient of an Arts Council Writers' Award and was published in 2005. The first edition of my creative writing guidebook The Art of Writing Fiction was published in 2011. My fifth novel Worthless Men was published in 2013, and my sixth novel Your Fault in 2019. I published Against Creative Writing in 2022 and a second, revised edition of The Art of Writing Fiction in 2023.

I also make pots.

c. Kate Bryan