Catriona Ward is an American-born British horror novelist. Her work has earned a number of accolades, including three British Fantasy Awards and a Shirley Jackson Award.
Catriona Ward was born to English parents in Washington, D.C. Due to her father's work as an international economist, the family moved around and she grew up all over the world, including in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. Dartmoor was the one place the family returned to on a regular basis.
Ward attended Bedales School and went on to study English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Ward initially worked as an actor based in New York.
When she returned to London she worked on her first novel while writing for a human rights foundation until she left to take an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. That novel, Rawblood (distributed in the United States as The Girl from Rawblood), was published in 2015.
Now she writes novels and short stories, and reviews for various publications. Ward won the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2016 at the British Fantasy Awards for Rawblood and again in 2018 for Little Eve, making her the first woman to win the prize twice. Little Eve also went on to win the prestigious Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. Her next gothic thriller, The Last House on Needless Street, was published through Viper Books (an imprint of Serpent's Tail) in March 2021, and Tor Nightfire (Tor Books) in the US, in September 2021. Andy Serkis and Jonathan CavendishâÂÂs The Imaginarium Productions has optioned film rights to the book.
Ward lives in London and Devon, England.
Among her literary awards, Catriona Ward is a 3-time winner of the August Derleth Award (Best Horror Novel) at the British Fantasy Awards.
Ward has also won the 2022 Sky Arts Awards "The Times Breakthrough Award" for Literature