As the daughter of an impoverished, struggling poet, Annabel Abbs spent her childhood in circumstances not dissimilar to Lucia's travelling and moving school/home/language with a 'present-but-absent' father fixated on his inner world. Annabel grew up in Bristol, Wales and Sussex, before studying English Literature at the University of East Anglia.

Her debut novel, The Joyce Girl, won the 2015 Impress Prize and was longlisted for the 2015 Bath Novel Award and the 2015 Caledonia Novel Award. She is now completing her second novel, based on the life of Frieda von Richthofen, wife and muse to D.H. Lawrence. Before Annabel began writing, she spent 15 years running a marketing consultancy where her clients included Reuters, Sony and the FT. She lives in London and Sussex with her husband and four children.