Imogen Hermes Gowar

A job in visitor services at the British Museum set Imogen Hermes Gowar writing short fiction about the objects around her. Her MA dissertation at East Anglia, where she had also read archaeology, anthropology and art history, grew into The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Harvill Secker, 2018). London, 1785: a Deptford merchant named Jonah Hancock learns that one of his captains has sold a ship and bought a mermaid with the proceeds, and the celebrated courtesan Angelica Neal enters his life. It won a Betty Trask Award and made the shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her great-grandmother was the engraver and sculptor Gertrude Hermes.