Sara Maitland was born in 1950 and brought up in London and Scotland. She took a degree in English at Oxford University. Since 1979, She has published six novels and five collections of short stories as well as an eclectic range of non-fiction, from gardening history to feminist theology and has an extensive journalism portfolio. She has written extensively for BBC Radio. One of her radio plays, Other Voices, won the Media Mental Health Award in 2002. She was the last scriptwriter to work with Stanley Kubrick on AI - now a Spielberg film, and worked on the prize-winning animation The Pleasures of War. She teaches for Lancaster University's distance learning MA in Creative Writing, and is an editorial reader for TLC (a literary consultancy). Until last year she was the Course Leader in Creative Writing for the Open College of the Arts.