Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham, England in 1959. The daughter of a Methodist minister, she studied history, philosophy and political science at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University. She worked as an editor for publishing houses. In the early 1990s she taught English in Turin and Bilbao, then returned to England and resumed working in publishing.

During this period she began writing the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which was published in 2004 to warm acclaim and commercial success, winning major awards (Hugo, Locus, Best Novel of 2004 for Time magazine). In 2015 it was brought to the small screen as a BBC mini-series.

It was followed in 2006 by the short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories.

In the following years, Clarke’s health deteriorated and she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Her writing pace was affected and plans for a sequel to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell were shelved. By 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Piranesi was published, which was also a critical and commercial success, was translated into thirty-one languages and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Susanna Clarke lives in Manchester with her partner Colin Greenland, a writer and critic.