About

Peggy Riley is a writer, playwright, and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing.  She has run writing workshops for the past 25 years in schools, libraries, festivals and prisons, as well as for social prescribing. She was a writer-on-attachment at Soho Theatre, and her plays were produced off-West End, on tour, and site-specifically in such places as historic churches, a former internment camp, and private homes. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for prizes including Bridport and the Costa Short Story Award. She has written for publications including Elle, The Big Issue, and The Wall Street Journal and for broadcast on BBC Radio Kent. Her first novel, Amity & Sorrow, was published in the UK, US, Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth as well as in translation for France, Italy and the Netherlands. Most recently, her essay “A Heartbeat” was commissioned and published in a new anthology, The Best Most Awful Job. She is a Yaddo fellow, and a recipient of a Grant for the Arts from Arts Council England. Originally from Los Angeles and the Mojave, she lives on the North Kent Coast.