Alison Mercer

Alison Mercer lives in Oxfordshire with her husband, the poet Ian Pindar, and their two children. Their son was diagnosed with autism in 2011, about a month after she landed her first book deal.

Alison was born in Reading in 1973 and first tried writing a novel at primary school. She went on to study English at University College, Oxford and did a diploma in journalism at Cardiff University. She worked as a reporter at The Stage and was a features writer at the WI magazine, where she witnessed the birth of the nude calendar phenomenon.

She began work on her first published novel, Stop the Clock, after starting a family, and wrote the first draft in monthly instalments for a fellow working mother. Alison's new novel, After I Left You, was inspired by 90s nostalgia, going back to the place she lived in when she was younger and never quite having outgrown her inner twentysomething.