Avril Joy

Avril Joy was born and brought up on the Somerset Levels, the setting for her first novel, The Sweet Track, published in 2007 by Flambard Press. She left home at eighteen for the University of East Anglia, where she studied the History of Art.

She worked as a Social Worker,in Norwich, then in Brixton London and taught in secondary schools in Greenwich and Deptford before moving north to County Durham.

After a year travelling abroad in: Sri Lanka and India she began working in a local women's prison HMP Low Newton, on the outskirts of Durham city. Here in 1999 she met writer-in-residence Wendy Robertson and began writing.

In 2003 she won a Northern Promise Award, from New Writing North. Since then she has completed several novels, as well as written short stories.She was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story prize in 2012 and was winner of the inaugural COSTA Short Story Award for 2012

She blogs regularly at www.avriljoy.com