Eimear McBride grew up in the west of Ireland and studied acting at Drama Centre London. Her debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing took nine years to publish and subsequently received the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, Desmond Elliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, as well as numerous other shortlistings including the Folio Prize and the L.A. Times First Fiction Award. She occasionally writes and reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman and the TLS. Less