Clare Hawkins was born and brought up in the west of Scotland and is a graduate of the universities of Edinburgh and Sheffield. After many years working in different sectors of education and when her two daughters left home, Clare embarked on a short distance-learning course on novel writing. What started as an experiment quickly became an enjoyable obsession with writing historical novels.
Inspiration for plots and settings derives from her fascination with British social history and her background and experiences of living in various different regions in England. Her second novel The Bookbinder’s Daughter was short-listed for the Historical Novel Society’s International Award 2012/13. Since then some of her other novels have been short and long-listed in various competitions: The Mslexia Novel Competition, The Yeovil Literary Award, The Exeter Novel Competition. She published her Civil War novel Lament for a Siege Town for a local interest market and her short stories have appeared in Sundial Magazine and The Copperfield Review.
Clare lives with her husband in Essex and is a doting grandmother of four, a volunteer in community education, a keen allotment gardener, cyclist, and musician of very modest ability.