Grace McCleen was born in Wales and grew up in a fundamentalist religion where she did not have much contact with non-believers. Her family moved to Ireland when she was ten, where she was schooled at home. When Grace and her family moved back to Britain she went back to school and her English teacher suggested she apply to Oxford. She studied English Literature at Oxford University and The University of York before becoming a full-time writer and musician. She lives in London. The Land of Decoration is her first novel. http://us.macmillan.com/author/gracem...

I am the author of two books, Ballistics and Once You Break a Knuckle, as well as a host of other separately published stories and essays, some of which have won prizes like BBC Short Story Award, the CBC Canada Writes Story Prize, and the Manchester Fiction Prize. That's the bones of my bio, same one you'll find on other websites or in the sleeves of my two books. I love books but I also love nerd stuff. I'm happy to dump dozens of hours into video game in a single sitting and I get unacceptably excited waiting for the latest superhero flick to start. I once put 600 hours into building a fibreglass Iron Man suit for my wife for Halloween (it had light-up eyes) which she danced to the end of love late into the night. I think of this as an outlet for unspent or untapped creative energy; I spend so much time at a desk, in front of a screen, that it is sometimes nice to work with my hands, even if I'm working on soldering an LED into a replica arc reactor. I grew up in the Kootenays and some part of the small town boy remains. I can chop lumber if under duress. I wish I owned a truck.