// Workers AI · dad joke modeIs Alice Jolly a sweet author? Jolly good writer.
Alice Jolly (born 1966) is an English novelist, playwright and memoirist. She has won the Royal Society of Literature V.S. Pritchett Short Story prize, the PEN/Ackerley Prize, an O. Henry Award, and the Walter Scott Prize.
Life
[edit]Jolly graduated from Worcester College, Oxford with a degree in Modern History in 1989.[1]
She teaches on the Creative Writing M.St. course at the University of Oxford.[2]
She is married to a lawyer, Stephen Kinsella. They have two children, Thomas and Hope, and live in Gloucestershire.[3]
Writing career
[edit]In 2014, Jolly was awarded the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize for her short story, Ray the Rottweiler.[4]
In 2016, she was awarded the PEN/Ackerley Prize for Dead Babies and Seaside Towns, her crowdfunded memoir about the experience of using a surrogate to carry her second child.[2][5]
Her novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was runner up for The Rathbones Folio Prize in 2019 and was also longlisted for The Ondaatje Prize also in 2019.
She was awarded an O. Henry Award in 2021 for her story "From Far Around They Saw Us Burn".[6]
In 2026, The Matchbox Girl, her novel about a mute autistic girl in Nazi Germany, won the Walter Scott Prize.[7][8]
She reviews for The Times Literary Supplement, The Literary Review and The Guardian.
She has also written plays for the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham and the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
Published works
[edit]- What the Eye Doesn’t See (Simon & Schuster, 2003)
- If Only You Knew (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
- Dead Babies and Seaside Towns (Unbound, 2015)
- Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile (Unbound, 2018)
- Between the Regions of Kindness (Unbound 2019)
- A Saint in Swindon (Fairlight, 2020)
- The Matchbox Girl (Bloomsbury, 2025)
References
[edit]- ↑ Oxford University, Department for Continuing Education web-page (accessed on 5 September 2016)
- 1 2 Alice Jolly's crowdfunded memoir wins PEN Ackerley Prize, The Bookseller (13 July 2016)
- ↑ Cotswold Life, Living with Hope, 1 April 2016
- ↑ Fiction: Ray the Rottweiler, Prospect, January 2015
- ↑ Helen Rumbelow (20 July 2015). "Surrogacy? It makes the Virgin Birth seem easy". The Times. pp. 6–7. Retrieved 8 March 2017. Alt URL
- ↑ "Alice Jolly". RCW Literary Agency. Retrieved 29 June 2026.
- ↑ "'Most unusual book' wins Walter Scott historical fiction prize". BBC. 12 June 2026. Retrieved 21 June 2026.
- ↑ "Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2026 shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. 21 April 2026. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
External links
[edit]- Alice Jolly's personal web-site
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
- 1966 births
- Living people
- 21st-century English short story writers
- 21st-century English memoirists
- 21st-century English novelists
- 21st-century English women writers
- English dramatists and playwrights
- Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
- English women memoirists
- Academics of the University of Oxford
- The Times people
- The Guardian people