Jo Baker talked about how she came to write her internationally bestselling novel, Longbourn. Inspired by her own family history and a life-long love of Austen, the book explores what’s going on below stairs in the Bennet household as the events of Pride and Prejudice play out above. 

Jo Baker is the author of seven novels, most recently The Body Lies, a ‘Campus Noir’ thriller set around a creative writing MA group, where events, and the writers’ stories, begin to spiral into darkness. Her previous book based on Samuel Beckett’s wartime experiences, A Country Road, A Tree, was shortlisted for the American Library in Paris Award, the James Tait Black Award, and Walter Scott Prize, and was a Book of the Year in the Guardian and New Statesman. Longbourn was published in 2013 to considerable international acclaim, and is currently in development as a feature film. She is a former Creative Writing Lecturer, an Honorary Fellow of Lancaster University and was a Visiting Fellow at the Queen’s University of Belfast. She is married to playwright and screenwriter Daragh Carville, co-creator of hit ITV series “The Bay.” They live in Lancaster, England.