Sarah Perry is the internationally best selling author of the novels Melmoth, The Essex Serpent, and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. Her no.1 bestseller The Essex Serpent was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her essays have been widely published, and she has contributed to the Guardian, the New York Times, the Observer, and the London Review of Books. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has a PhD in Creative Writing, and has been a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague, and a Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library and the Savoy Hotel in London.