Amanda Hodgkinson

http://www.amandahodgkinson.com

I was born in Somerset but grew up in a village on the Blackwater estuary in Essex. My memories of childhood are of shingle beaches and mudflats, grey-green heather, salt marshes, messing about in boats, gangs of rowdy kids playing all day along the sea-walls, and the ever-present cries of seagulls.

As an adult, I moved inland to Suffolk. I took an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and after the MA, my husband and I, with our two young daughters, upped sticks and bought a property in south west France. I thought I would have the time to write a novel but we bought a wreck of a house and I spent the first few years of our new life mixing concrete. We also had to learn French, settle our daughters into school and deal with the ups and downs of settling in to a country miles away from friends and family.

Finally though, we made a home here. And I finished the novel...

22 Britannia Road, my debut novel became an international bestseller. My new book Spilt Milk is out in February 2014 (Penguin Books) and a novella Tin Town (Grand Central Penguin US) will be published this summer. Meanwhile I have begun work on a third novel...