Candia McWilliam

Candia McWilliam was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1955 and educated at Girton College, Cambridge. She won a Vogue writing competition in 1971 and worked for the magazine between 1976 and 1979.

Her first novel, the macabre A Case of Knives (1988), was joint winner of the Betty Trask Prize. It was followed by A Little Stranger, a disturbing tale of domestic life, in 1989. Both books won Scottish Arts Council Book Awards. Debatable Land (1994) won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour for the best foreign novel of the year. The book follows the adventures of the crew of a yacht sailing from Tahiti to New Zealand, exploring each character's differing experience of loneliness and exile.

Her book, Wait till I Tell You (1997), is a collection of short stories. She is a regular reviewer for a number of newspapers.

Her latest book is What to Look for in Winter (2009).