Emma Claire Sweeney

I am a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University and Director of the Ruppin Agency – an organisation that offers a range of services to authors trying to take their writing to the next level: literary mentoring, manuscript appraisal, agent submission-package assessment, community outreach, and Little Goat Barn writing retreats in North Wales and beyond.

I completed my undergraduate studies in English at the University of Cambridge, my MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and my PhD at the OU, where my thesis explored literary representations of learning disability.

I was named as both an Amazon Rising Star and a Hive Rising Writer for my debut novel, OWL SONG AT DAWN (Legend, 2016). Inspired by my sister who has cerebral palsy and autism, it went on to win Nudge Literary Book of the Year.

Stemming from Something Rhymed, the website on female literary friendship that I run with my own friend Emily Midorikawa, we co-wrote our debut non-fiction book, A SECRET SISTERHOOD: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf (Aurum 2017). In her foreword, Margaret Atwood described the work as a great 'service to literary history' and The Financial Times called it ‘an exceptional act of literary espionage’.

I have won Society of Authors, Arts Council and Royal Literary Fund Awards, have been Writer in Residence for disability and care organisations such as Mencap, and I have written for the likes of The Paris Review, TIME and The Washington Post.