13 Facts About Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley's writing is realistic and often focuses on family relationships.

Tessa Hadley's novels have twice reached the longlists of the Orange Prize and the Wales Book of the Year, and in 2016 she won the Hawthornden Prize, as well as one of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes for fiction.

Tessa Hadley's father Geoff Nichols was a teacher and amateur jazz trumpeter, and her mother Mary an amateur artist.

Tessa Hadley gained a BA in English followed by a PGCE at Clare College, Cambridge, and briefly taught at a comprehensive school before starting a family.

In 1982 she married Eric Hadley, a teacher, lecturer and playwright, and they moved to Cardiff, where Eric Hadley taught at Cardiff University and the University of Wales Institute.

Tessa Hadley's first published novel, Accidents in the Home, written while bringing up her family, appeared in 2002 when she was 46.

Tessa Hadley's continued study of the author Henry James has resulted in a book, as well as several research and conference papers.

Tessa Hadley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009 and is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

Tessa Hadley is the chair of the New Welsh Reviews editorial board.

Tessa Hadley has served as a judge for the International Dublin Literary Award, BBC National Short Story Award, O Henry Prize for short stories and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Tessa Hadley's novels are realistic, set in Britain between 1950 and the present day, often in cities outside London, and feature comfortably middle-class characters, with a focus on women.

Tessa Hadley has stated that she incorporated some material from her mother's life in her second novel, Everything Will Be All Right, which documents women's roles over the previous fifty years in its description of four generations of one family.

Tessa Hadley has stated that she conceived the two sections separately.