Clare Furniss
Biography
Clare Furniss
Clare grew up in London, and moved to the Birmingham suburbs in her teens. She always loved creative writing, and as a child wrote stories and poems in her spare time, but it never occurred to her that she could do it for a living.
She worked as a waitress, a shop assistant, and a general dogsbody at the Shakespeare Centre Library in Stratford-upon-Avon (where the biggest perk of the job was lots of free theatre tickets) before studying at Cambridge University, later gaining an MLitt from Aberdeen University.
Clare went on to work in media relations for the homelessness charity Shelter and spent several years as a press officer for then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. This entailed a lot of writing – press releases, articles, briefing papers – but it wasn’t until she took a career break to have her children that Clare at last plucked up the courage to do what she’d always really wanted to do, and write a book.
She was awarded a place on the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, and wrote THE YEAR OF THE RAT as her MA manuscript.
Clare now lives in a very untidy house in Bath with her husband and three children.
Clare Furniss
- Website: clarefurniss.com/
