Samantha Harvey (author)

Samantha Harvey, 2019

Samantha Harvey is an English novelist. She is the author of several critically acclaimed novels and has been shortlisted for various literary prizes.

Education

Harvey completed the Bath Spa University Creative Writing MA course in 2005, and has also completed a postgraduate course in philosophy and a PhD in creative writing.

Doing a headstand on stage at the Wigtown Book Festival

Career

Her first novel The Wilderness (2009), is written from the point of view of man developing Alzheimer's disease, and describes through increasingly fractured prose the unravelling effect of the disease. Her second novel, All Is Song (2012), is a novel about moral and filial duty, and about the choice between questioning and conforming. The author has described the novel as a loose, modern day reimagining of the life of Socrates.

Her third novel, Dear Thief, is a long letter from a woman to her absent friend, detailing the emotional fallout of a love triangle. The novel is said to be based on the Leonard Cohen song Famous Blue Raincoat. It was published in 2014 by Jonathan Cape. Her fourth novel, The Western Wind, about a priest in fifteenth-century Somerset, was published in March 2018.

The Shapeless Unease, her only work of non-fiction, is an account of her experience of severe insomnia. Her most recent novel, Orbital (2023) takes place on a space station over one day of low earth orbits, and has been described by Mark Haddon as "one of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time".

Her short stories have appeared in Granta Magazine and on BBC Radio 4. She reviews for the Guardian and The New York Times, and has contributed essays and articles to the New Yorker, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and TIME magazine among others. Radio appearances include Radio 4's Front Row, Open Book, A Good Read and Start the Week, and Radio 3's Free Thinking.

On stage with Petina Gappah and Lee Randall at the Edinburgh International Book Festival

Harvey's novels have been considered for many prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Walter Scott Prize, and the Orange Prize. In 2010 she was named one of the 12 best new British novelists by The Culture Show. In 2019, The Western Wind won the Staunch Book Prize.

She is a Reader on the MA in creative writing at Bath Spa University and a member of the academy for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and is as of 2023 acting as a mentor for the Rathbones Folio Mentorships. She was a member of the jury for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has held writing fellowships at MacDowell in the US, Hawthornden in Scotland, and the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Italy.

She teaches regularly for Arvon, and runs writing courses annually in Spain/Italy with the author Emma Hooper.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Wilderness. Jonathan Cape. 2009. ISBN 978-0-224-08607-3.
• All Is Song. Jonathan Cape. 2012. ISBN 978-0-224-09632-4.
• Dear Thief. Jonathan Cape. 2014. ISBN 978-0-224-10172-1.
• The Western Wind. Jonathan Cape. 2018. ISBN 978-1-78733-059-7.
• Orbital. Jonathan Cape. 2023. ISBN 9781787334342.

Non-fiction

• The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Jonathan Cape. 2020. ISBN 978-1-78733-202-7.

Accolades

Harvey's writing has been compared to that of Virginia Woolf, and she has been praised for her lyrical prose and insightful explorations of the human psyche.

Nominations and prizes

• Shortlisted for the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for The Western Wind
• Winner of the 2019 Staunch Book Prize
• Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes (2015)
• Longlisted for the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize (2015)
• Longlisted for the Baileys Prize for Fiction (2015)
• Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2009)
• Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2009)
• Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award (2009)
• Winner of the AMI Literature Award (2009)
• Winner of the Betty Trask Prize (2009)

Translations

Harvey's novels have been published in the following translations: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Norwegian, Portuguese and Romanian.