Ann Cleeves grew up in North Devon. She has worked as bird observatory cook, women's refuge worker, probation officer and auxiliary coastguard. She started writing when her ornithologist husband was warden of Hilbre, an otherwise uninhabited island in the Dee Estuary.
Ann's short film for Border TV, Catching Birds, won a Royal Television Society Award. She has twice been short listed for a CWA Dagger Award - once for her short story The Plater, and the following year for the Dagger in the Library award. In 2006 she won the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for best crime novel of the year for Raven Black, the first volume of her Shetland Quartet.
For the National Year of Reading, Ann was made reader-in-residence for three library authorities. It came as a revelation that it was possible to get paid for talking to readers about books! She went on to set up reading groups in prisons as part of the Inside Books project, became Cheltenham Literature Festival's first reader-in-residence and works as associate trainer with the reader development organisation Opening the Book. She is reader-in-residence for Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Her reading passion is crime in translation. Ann is a member of the prestigious Crime Squad.
Early work:
A Bird in the Hand - Century Hutchinson/Arrow - 1986
Come Death and High Water Century/Arrow - 1987
Murder in Paradise Century/Arrow - 1988
A Prey to Murder Century/Arrow - 1989
A Lesson in Dying Century/Arrow/A&B - 1990
Murder in my Backyard Century/Arrow/A&B - 1991
Another Man's Poison Macmillan/A&B - 1992
A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy Macmillan/A&B - 1992
Sea Fever Macmillan/A&B - 1993
Killjoy Macmillan/A&B - 1993
The Mill on the Shore Macmillan - 1994
The Healers Macmillan/A&B - 1995
High Island Blues Macmillan - 1996
The Babysnatcher Macmillan/A&B - 1997
Ann's most acclaimed works to date are the Stanhope series, set in Northumberland, and, most recently, the Shetland Quartet. Hidden Depths has been commissioned as an ITV drama, and there is currently much interest in adapting the Shetland mysteries for television.
Vera Stanhope:
The Crow Trap (Macmillan 1999/Pan 2001)
Telling Tales (Macmillan 2005/Pan 2006)
Hidden Depths (Macmilllan/Pan 2007)
Shetland Quartet (so far...)
Raven Black (Macmillan/Pan 2006)
White Nights (Macmillan 2008/Pan 2009
Red Bones (Macmillan 2009)
Profile updated 14th January 2009 - with thanks to Naomi Berwin at Macmillan for the content
