Clare Morrall - best selling author

Exeter can claim several fine writers, Clare Morrall being one from recent times. Born in 1952 in Exeter, Clare Morrall moved to Birmingham to study music. She works in the Blue Coat School teaching piano and violin, and has two adult children.

Clare Morrall had been writing for twenty years, without publication, before her novel Astonishing Splashes of Colour was accepted by a Birmingham publisher, the Tindall Street Press. She had an advance of £2,000, and 2,000 copies were printed. A further 10,000 copies were printed after the announcement that the novel had been shortlisted for the Mann/Booker prize in 2003. The novel explores the world of a woman who grieves for her dead baby, often lingering outside schools, wondering what the child would be like if he had lived. She kidnaps a child, and takes it on holiday to the seaside, as she gradually loses her hold on reality.

Clare Morrall's second novel, published in 2006 was Natural Flights of the Human Mind, which explores the theme of guilt.