‘Jensen is becoming one of our best writers, sometimes surreal, sometimes down to earth, always with a great and embracing human sympathy’  - Fay Weldon

‘Our most brilliant woman novelist’ – Rod Liddle

‘Liz Jensen is a true original, beholden to nobody’ – Deborah Moggach

‘Liz Jensen is one of the few living writers who can be describes as genuinely original’ – Matt Thorne

‘My favourite writer – she’s phenomenal.’ - Jenny Éclair

Liz Jensen was born in Oxfordshire, to an Anglo-Moroccan librarian mother and a Danish violin-maker father. She studied English at Somerville College, Oxford and worked first as a journalist in Hongkong and Taiwan, then a TV and radio producer for the BBC in the UK.

In 1987 she moved to France where she worked as a sculptor and freelance journalist, and began writing her first novel, Egg Dancing. This was published in 1995, after her return to London, where she wrote Ark Baby (1998), The Paper Eater (2000), War Crimes for the Home (2002), The Ninth Life of Louis Drax (2004), My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (2006) and The Rapture (2009). She is currently working on her eighth novel, a ghost story.

Liz Jensen’s work has been short-listed for the Guardian Fiction award, nominated three times for the Orange Prize, developed for film, and translated into more than 20 languages. She has two sons, and shares her life with the Danish writer Carsten Jensen, best-selling author of We, The Drowned. She divides her time between London and Copenhagen.

News

January 2010: The Rapture is selected as a Channel 4 TV Book Club Best Read

June 2009: publication of The Rapture
June 2008: The Rapture optioned by Warner Brothers
June 2006: publication of My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time
2005: Liz becomes a Writer in Residence at Kingston University.
June 2004: publication of The Ninth Life of Louis Drax
February 2004: The Ninth Life of Louis Drax optioned by Miramax
2003: War Crimes for the Home longlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction and adapted for the stage by Leila Borris.
May 2002: publication of War Crimes for the Home
2000: publication of The Paper Eater
1999: Ark Baby longslisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award.
1998: publication of Ark Baby
1995: publication of Egg dancing, longlisted for the Orange Prize.