Frances Hardinge is a writer who wears a black hat. She spent her childhood in a huge, isolated old house in a small, strange village, which inspired her to write strange, magical stories.
She won the Branford Boase First Novel Award in 2006 with her debut, Fly By Night. Her subsequent novels have been shortlisted for multiple awards including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the CILIP Carnegie Medal.
Her seventh novel, The Lie Tree, is a Victorian murder mystery and won the Costa Book of the Year 2015 and the Sunday Times Children’s Book of the Year 2015.