Christie Watson is a British writer and Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of East Anglia. [1] She has written six books including her first novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which won the Costa First Novel Award, [2] [3] and first memoir The Language of Kindness which was a Number One Sunday Times Bestseller. [4] Her work has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre. [5] Her latest book Moral Injuries is currently being developed as a television series. [6]
Her nursing career included Great Ormond Street Hospital, St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, and Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital.
She won the Malcolm Bradbury Bursary, which enabled her to take an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, from where she graduated in 2009. [7]
Her first novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award in the 2011 Costa Book Awards.
Her second novel, Where Women Are Kings (2014), also won critical praise and has been widely translated. [8]
In 2018 she published a memoir, The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story, which was broadcast as the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 in May 2018 and spent over five months in The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller list. [9] [10] It was named as a Book of the Year in 2018 by The Guardian , Sunday Times , The Daily Telegraph , The Times , New Statesman , Netgalley and Reading Agency.
Watson published two further memoirs to critical acclaim: The Courage to Care and Quilt on Fire both receiving five-star critical reviews. [11] [12]
Weidenfeld & Nicolson have acquired three novels from Watson in a major deal. The first, Moral Injuries, has been published in 2024 [13] and received positive reviews, including praise for best new thrillers. [14] [15] [16] It is currently being developed as a television series. [6]
Watson lives in London. She is a contributor to the media including The Guardian , [17] The Telegraph , [18] The New York Times , [19] and has been a guest speaker for various radio and television shows including BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2, [20] BBC news, Sky News, The Lorraine Show. [21]
She has delivered speeches across the UK, including the keynote speech at Royal College of Nursing Conference, [22] and TedX. [23]
She appears regularly at literary festivals, for example, Hay, Southbank, [24] and Edinburgh. [25]
| Achievement | Year |
|---|---|
| University of East Anglia - Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa | 2018 |
| Shortlisted BBI Narrative Non-Fiction Book of the Year | 2018 |
| Shortlisted IBW Adult Book Award | 2018 |
| Marie Claire Magazine – Future Shaper Award | 2018 |
| Waverton Good Read Award | 2013 |
| Red Magazine’s Hot Woman of the Year (Creative) | 2012 |
| Costa First Novel Award | 2012 |
Christie Watson is Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. [26]
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Kate Atkinson is an English writer of novels, plays and short stories. She is known for creating the Jackson Brodie series of detective novels, which has been adapted into the BBC One series Case Histories. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in 1995 in the Novels category for Behind the Scenes at the Museum, winning again in 2013 and 2015 under its new name the Costa Book Awards.
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, and a sequence of novels and films beginning with the life of a thirty-something singleton in London trying to make sense of life and love. Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999) were published in 40 countries and sold more than 15 million copies. The two films of the same name achieved international success. In a survey conducted by The Guardian newspaper, Bridget Jones's Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century.
Louise Doughty is an English novelist and screenwriter. She is best known for her bestselling novels, including Apple Tree Yard. She has also worked as a cultural critic for newspapers and magazines. Her weekly column for The Daily Telegraph was published as A Novel in a Year in 2007. Doughty was the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme A Good Read in 1998 to 2001.
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Atonement is a 2001 British metafictional novel written by Ian McEwan. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing.
Murder in Mesopotamia is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 July 1936 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The cover was designed by Robin McCartney.
Duncan Campbell is a British journalist and author who has worked particularly on crime issues. He was a senior reporter/correspondent for The Guardian from 1987 until 2010. He is also the author of several books.
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Ruth Alexandra Elisabeth Jones is a Welsh actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She co-wrote and co-starred in the award-winning BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey. She later co-wrote and starred in the Sky One comedy-drama Stella (2012-2017), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance and won the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Screenwriter.
Beatrice Clare Dunkel was a British author. Earlier in her life she worked as an actress and model under the name Candy Davis and appeared as Miss Belfridge in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served?. She went on to write novels as Mo Hayder. She won an Edgar Award in 2012.
Kia Abdullah is a British novelist and travel writer. She is the best-selling author of courtroom dramas Take It Back, Truth Be Told, Next of Kin and Those People Next Door. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times,The Financial Times, The Telegraph and the BBC, among other publications.
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.
Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Before I Go to Sleep is the first novel by S. J. Watson, published in the spring of 2011. It became both a Sunday Times and The New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 40 languages, and has become a bestseller in France, Canada, Bulgaria and the Netherlands. It reached number 7 on the US bestseller list, the highest position for a debut novel by a British author since J. K. Rowling. The New York Times described the author as an "out-of-nowhere literary sensation". He wrote the novel between shifts whilst working as a National Health Service (NHS) audiologist.
Nathan Filer is a British writer best known for his debut novel, The Shock of the Fall. This won several major literary awards, including the Costa Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. It was a Sunday Times Bestseller, and has been translated into thirty languages.
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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a novel by Stuart Turton which won the Best First Novel prize in the 2018 Costa Book Awards and reached number one on TheSaturday Times Bestseller list and number five on The Sunday Times Bestseller list.
B.A. Paris is a Franco-British writer of fiction, mainly in the psychological thriller subgenre. Her debut novel, Behind Closed Doors (2016), was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. It has been translated into 40 languages and has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.
The Man Who Died Twice is a crime novel written by the British comedian and presenter Richard Osman. It was published by Penguin Random House's Viking Press in September 2021 and is the sequel to The Thursday Murder Club.
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