Emma van Straaten is a writer of British-Mauritian heritage living in London with her husband and two daughters. Born in Lewisham, she grew up on the Sussex coast, headed north to Durham to study English Literature, and is now happily surrounded by books working at The London Library. In 2021, days after her first child was born, she won the inaugural Discoveries Prize with an early partial draft of her debut novel, This Immaculate Body and has been writing whenever she can, ever since.