Candida Harper

Candida Harper grew up in a rather small house with a rather large family in Oxfordshire. As the fourth of five sisters it was often hard to get a word in edgeways, so she started writing down her best ideas. It's probably not a coincidence that her first 'book' featured an orphan living in a deserted castle.

Growing up, Candida attended six different schools, but that honestly had very little to do with an early interest in explosives.

Candida has been a bookseller, a teacher and the person who puts those little stickers on apples. Her first novel, This is How it Feels, is due out from Simon and Schuster in 2013. 

She is married and has a daughter named after Philip Pullman’s Lyra.