Jane Rogers was born in London in 1952 and lived in Birmingham, New York State (Grand Island) and Oxford, before doing an English degree at Cambridge University. She taught English for 6 years before the publication of her first novel, Separate Tracks. Since then she has written eight novels including Mr Wroe's Virgins, Island, The Voyage Home and most recently The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press), as well as original and adapted work for television and radio drama. In 1994 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is currently Professor of Writing on the MA course at Sheffield Hallam University. She lives near Manchester with her partner and two children. In 2009 her story 'Hitting Trees With Sticks' was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Prize. In 2011 her novel The Testament of Jessie Lamb was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.