Maggie Ritchie

My debut novel Paris Kiss (2015 Saraband) won the Curtis Brown Prize, was runner up for the Sceptre and Mslexia First Novel prizes. My second novel Looking for Evelyn (2017 Saraband) was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Daisy Chain was published in hardback in 2020 by Two Roads and came out in paperback in June 2022.

A journalist, I graduated with Distinction from the University of Glasgow's MLitt in Creative Writing. I've appeared at author events at Aye Write!, Edinburgh Reads and various local libraries, and carried out creative writing workshops in schools (ages 10-12 and Advanced Higher English). I've also appeared on the Janice Forsyth Show on BBC Scotland and STV talking about my novels.

In 2018, I travelled to Shanghai on a Society of Authors grant to research Daisy Chain, which was inspired by the eventful lives of the artists known as the Glasgow Girls and is set in turn of the century Scotland and 1920s Shanghai. Paris Kiss is set in 19th century Paris and is about Rodin and his affair with his protogée and muse, the sculptor Camille Claudel. Looking for Evelyn is set against post-colonial southern Africa and was inspired by my childhood in Zambia.  

(Photo credit: Mark Anderson)