Andrew Cowan was born in Corby and educated at the University of East Anglia. His first novel, Pig, was the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, a Betty Trask Award, the Ruth Hadden Memorial Prize, the Authors' Club First Novel Award and a Scottish Council Book Award, and was shortlisted for five other literary prizes. He is also the author of the writing guidebook The Art of Writing Fiction and four other novels: Common Ground, Crustaceans, What I Know and Worthless Men. He is the Director of the Creative Writing programme at UEA.