Ann Cleeves

In 2014 Cleeves was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sunderland. In 2015, Cleeves was the Programming Chair for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival & the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library UK Crime Writers' Association award for an author's body of work in British libraries (UK) In February 2019 Ann Cleeves appeared on Desert Island Discs.

In 2013, Red Bones was dramatised by David Kane for BBC television as the first episode of the series Shetland, which stars Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez. Episodes broadcast in 2014 were based on Raven Black, Dead Water, and Blue Lightning.

In addition to her crime novels, Cleeves has written a number of ghost stories to be read at Newcastle upon Tyne's Literary and Philosophical Society. One of these was issued as part of the anthology Phantoms at the Phil. – The Second Proceedings (together with a live recording of the author performing it) in a numbered limited edition of 300 copies by Side Real Press.

These novels, except for The Glass Room, have been dramatized in the television series Vera on ITV, which stars Brenda Blethyn in the title role. The programme premiered in May 2011.

Ann Cleeves (born 1954) is an English crime-writer. In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for her novel Raven Black. Cleeves was born in Herefordshire and brought up in north Devon where she attended Barnstaple Grammar School; she studied English at the University of Sussex but dropped out and then took up various jobs including cook at the Fair Isle bird observatory, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer, library outreach worker and child care officer. She lives in Whitley Bay, and is widowed with two daughters.