The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

Imogen Hermes Gowar is a British author of historical fiction whose debut novel, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (2018), won the Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, among other accolades including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. She studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history at the University of East Anglia (BA 2006-2009), worked in museums and as a barista while developing her writing, and earned an MA in creative writing there (2013-2014) with the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Scholarship. Her great-grandmother was engraver Gertrude Hermes, and she contributes to anthologies of ghostly tales.