Elizabeth Ridley began her first novel, THROWING ROSES, at the age of 22. Her books have since been published in hardcover, paperback, and e-book editions around the world.
THROWING ROSES (The Permanent Press, New York, 1993) was followed by THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY OF MISS TRANBY QUIRKE (Virago Press/Little, Brown & Co. UK, 1996); RAINEY’S LAMENT (Virago Press/Little, Brown & Co. UK, 1998; The Overlook Press, New York, 1999; Gendas Publishers, Turkey, 1999) and DEAR MR. CARSON (The Permanent Press, New York, 2006). Her fifth novel, CELIA FROST, a literary thriller set in contemporary London and inspired by Graham Greene’s classic THE THIRD MAN, was completed in 2011.
A first American edition of THE REMARKABLE JOURNEY OF MISS TRANBY QUIRKE was published by Bold Strokes Books in New York in 2009 and a feature film based on the novel is presently in pre-production in Great Britain by producer Emma Lamont.
A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Elizabeth has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in creative writing from The University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, where she studied under former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion. In 1994 she received a Hawthornden Fellowship to Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland, and in 2011 she received a Literary Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Today Elizabeth lives in suburban Milwaukee with her feline office assistants Claudius and Calpurnia. After 13 years running a home-based freelance editing and consulting business, “The Writer’s Midwife,” she recently founded a low-budget independent feature film production company, “Girl on the Lam Productions,” whose first production, a family comedy-drama titled “The Pilgrim Soul,” is scheduled to begin filming in 2013.