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 inaugural Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Desmond Elliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Dubliners 100, The Long Gaze Back and on BBC Radio 4. She occasionally reviews for the Guardian, TLS, New Statesman and New York Times Book Review.