Kiran.Millwood Hargrave author page

Kiran Millwood Hargrave biography

Kiran Millwood Hargrave FRSL is a British author, poet, and playwright, acclaimed for her contributions to children’s and young adult literature. Born on 29 March 1990 in Surrey, she pursued English and Drama at Homerton College, Cambridge, graduating in 2011, and later completed an MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford in 2014.

Her literary career commenced with poetry, earning recognition such as the 2013 Yeovil International Poetry Prize. Transitioning to fiction, her debut children’s novel, The Girl of Ink & Stars (2016), achieved significant acclaim, winning the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year. Subsequent works include The Island at the End of Everything (2017), shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, and The Way Past Winter (2018), which won Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year.

Expanding into young adult fiction, Hargrave authored The Deathless Girls (2019), reimagining the origin stories of Dracula’s brides. Her foray into adult fiction began with The Mercies (2020), inspired by the 17th-century Vardø witch trials in Norway, followed by The Dance Tree (2022), set against the backdrop of the Strasbourg dancing plague of 1518. Both novels received critical acclaim, with The Mercies earning a Betty Trask Award.

Hargrave’s collaborative works with illustrator Tom de Freston include Julia and the Shark (2021) and Leila and the Blue Fox (2022), both praised for their lyrical prose and visual storytelling. In 2023, she launched the Geomancer trilogy with In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen, marking her return to middle-grade fantasy.

Her accolades encompass the Jhalak Prize shortlist, the Blue Peter Book Award shortlist, and longlistings for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, recognising her significant impact on contemporary literature.