Tara Crowe author page

Tara Crowe biography

Tara Crowe is a British YA author whose debut novel, Little Mice, is published by Leapfrog Press. Before writing fiction professionally, Crowe spent a decade working in publishing sales at The Guardian and New Scientist. She later moved into early years education, where she taught phonics using storytelling and puppets, and subsequently worked for the collagen supplement company Ingenious.

Little Mice is a dystopian novel centred on Astra Fairwood, a teenager raised in the privileged Canopy Complex, where residents avoid ageing through plasma supplied by people living in the Donor Zone. When Astra is expelled from the Canopy, she is forced to confront the society and assumptions on which her former life depended. Crowe has said that the idea developed after she encountered a news report about the use of young blood plasma in research into rejuvenation.

An earlier version of Little Mice was highly commended in the 2024 Farnham Literary Festival First Five Thousand writing competition. The manuscript was also named second runner-up in the YA/MG category of the 2024 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize. Crowe returned to the competition the following year, when Little Mice won the YA/MG category of the 2025 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize. Leapfrog Press subsequently published the novel in 2026.