Hot Milk (Levy)

Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—South Africa
• Education—Dartington College of Arts
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK


Deborah Levy, born in South Africa, is is a British playwright, novelist, and poet. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and she is the author of several novels including, Swimming Home and Hot Milk, both of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Life
Levy's father was a member of the African National Congress and an academic and historian. The family emigrated to Wembley Park, in 1968. Her parents divorced in 1974.

Work
Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts, leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, including Pax, Heresies for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and others which are published in Levy: Plays 1 (Methuen).  She also served as director and writer for Manact Theatre Company in Cardiff, Wales.

Her first novel Beautiful Mutants, came out in 1986; her second, Swallowing Geography, in 1993; and her third, Billy and Girl, in 1996.

Swimming Home, her 2011 novel, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. It was also shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year prize at the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards and for the 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.

Levy published a short story collection, Black Vodka, which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award 2012, and in 2016 she released her fourth novel, Hot Milk, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

She has always written across a number of art forms (including collaborations with visual artists) and was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989 to 1991. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/24/2014.)