Sally Emerson

Emerson was educated at Wimbledon High School and St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

Her anthologies, collections of poetry and prose on birth, love and death are ‘In Loving Memory: A Collection for Memorial Services, Funerals and Just Getting By’ (2004), ‘Be Mine: An Anthology for Lovers, Weddings and Ever After’ (2007) and ‘New Life, An Anthology for Parenthood’ (2009).

Her other non-fiction anthology titles include ‘A Celebration of Babies’ (1986), ‘The Kingfisher Nursery Treasury’ (1988),

Her six novels are being republished in 2017 by Quartet in its Rediscovered Classics series, with the dark love stories Fire Child and Heat coming out in March and the coming of age novel Second Sight in June along with Separation, another dark love story but with a child as the central heroine.

Since 2003 she has also worked as a travel writer for the Sunday Times as well as contributing to other newspapers.

In 1980 she published her first novel Second Sight. It won a Yorkshire Post Best First Novel award. In the US the title was The Second Sight of Jennifer Hamilton. Next came Listeners in 1983, the bestsellers Fire Child (1987), Separation (titled Hush Little Baby in the US) 1992 and Heat set in Washington DC in 1998. Broken Bodies came out in 2001.

She married Peter Stothard in 1980 and they have two children, the novelist Anna Stothard and journalist Michael Stothard, born 1983 and 1987.

She worked on The Illustrated London News then became assistant editor of Plays and Players in 1976. From 1978-1985 she was editor of the literary magazine Books and Bookmen (which briefly became Book Choice then returned to the title Books and Bookmen).

While at Oxford she edited Isis, won the Vogue Talent Contest for writing in 1972 and the Radio Times Young Journalist of the Year competition along with a Catherine Pakenham Award and wrote for The Times.