Kate Summerscale is an award-winning English writer and journalist.

She is the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2008, and the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, about Joe Carstairs, 'fastest woman on water', which won a Somerset Maugham Award

Somerset Maugham Award

The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...

 in 1998 and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Awards

1997 Whitbread Awards

-Shortlist:*Alan Temperley, Harry and the Wrinklies*Sharon Creech, Chasing Redbird*Melvin Burgess, Junk-Shortlist:*Anne Haverty, One Day as a Tiger*Mick Jackson, The Underground Man*Ardashir Vakil, Beach Boy...

 for biography.

She formerly worked for The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

and from 1995 to 1996 she wrote and edited obituaries for The Daily Telegraph. She is the former literary editor of The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

Her articles have appeared in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

She has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize in 2001.

Biography

She was brought up in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

. After attending Bedales School

Bedales School

Bedales School is a co-educational independent school situated in Hampshire, in the south east of England. Founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventional Victorian schools, today the school is one of the most expensive in the UK, charging £9,985 per term for a...

 (1978–1983), she took a double-first at Oxford University and an MA

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 in Journalism from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. She lives in London with her son.

Winner

• 1998 - Somerset Maugham Award
  Somerset Maugham Award
  The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
  
   - The Queen of Whale Cay
• 2008 - Samuel Johnson Prize
  Samuel Johnson Prize
  The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is one of the most prestigious prizes for non-fiction writing. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award and based on an anonymous donation. The prize is named after Samuel Johnson...
  
   for non-fiction - The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House
• 2010 - Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
  Royal Society of Literature
  The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
  
  

Shortlisted

• 1997 - Whitbread Award for biography
  1997 Whitbread Awards
  -Shortlist:*Alan Temperley, Harry and the Wrinklies*Sharon Creech, Chasing Redbird*Melvin Burgess, Junk-Shortlist:*Anne Haverty, One Day as a Tiger*Mick Jackson, The Underground Man*Ardashir Vakil, Beach Boy...
  
   - The Queen of Whale Cay

External links

• Kate Summerscale's official website at www.mrwhicher.com
• Kate Summserscale's articles at journalisted.com
• 'The Prince of Sleuths', Kate Summerscale in The Guardian, April 5, 2008
• Q & A with Kate Summerscale
• Listen to an audio interview with Kate Summerscale from The Interview Online
• Watch The Suspicions of Mr Whicher being discussed on Newsnight Review