Peter Ho Davies

Born in Coventry in 1966 to a Welsh father and a Chinese mother from Malaysia, Peter Ho Davies read physics at Manchester and English at Cambridge before crossing to Boston University for a writing degree. He teaches in the Helen Zell Writers' Program at Michigan and has held Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts support. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, set in Snowdonia in 1944 around a camp holding German prisoners, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, from 2021, works much closer to the bone. Written in the second person and broken into short sections, it follows a couple who end a first pregnancy after prenatal results they cannot fully read, then raise the son of a second pregnancy through years of tests, appointments and doubt. It was named a notable book of the year.