About

Joanne Rush is novelist, a poet and an academic. She holds two Arts Council funded PhDs - the first in Renaissance Literature and Visual Art from Cambridge University (2010), and the second in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University (2025). Dancing on Knives, her debut novel, was nominated for the 2025 Booker Prize.

Her short story Guests won The Fiction Desk’s ghost stories competition, and her fiction has been published in collections including Best British Short Stories, Ghost: 100 Stories to Read with the Lights On, and Northern Gravy. Her first poetry pamphlet, Peninsula, was published in 2023 by Tiny Wren Lit, and her poems can be found in magazines and journals such as Rattle, Pomegranate, and Across the Margins.

Joanne’s second novel, The Girl in the Locket, is a tale of art, identity, and secrets. A literary historical detective story, it draws on her fascination for Tudor portrait miniatures.

Joanne has been giving talks and workshops on literature and creative writing for over 15 years, with recent highlights including Oxford University, Shanghai University, and classes on story-telling and heritage for the Institute of Development Studies.