Tracey Warr was born in London and currently lives in Wales and France. She started writing medieval fiction after working as a contemporary art curator and lecturer. She draws on her knowledge of art history for her fiction - using objects, images and places to inspire her writing. Her fiction is based on historical research and she imagines in the gaps between known historical facts. A reviewer described her novels as 'machiavellious plotting ... human chess played with lives and lands'.She studied English Literature at Oxford University, holds a PhD in Art History from Plymouth University, and an MA in Creative Writing from University of Wales. Her first historical novel Almodis (Impress, 2011) was set in early medieval France and Spain. It was shortlisted for the Impress Prize, presented in the Rome Film Festival Book Initiative and won a Santander Research Award. Her second novel The Viking Hostage (Impress, 2014) topped Amazon Australia Kindle's Medieval bestsellers list. She was recently awarded a Literature Wales Writer's Bursary for work on her third novel about the Welsh princess Nest and King Henry I, set in 12th century Wales and England, which will be published next year. She received an Author's Foundation Award from the Society of Authors this year for a biography she is working on about three French noblewomen, three sisters, who held power in 11th century Toulouse, Carcassonne, Barcelona and the Pyrenees. She is a Book Reviews Editor for Historical Novels Review and writes art book reviews for Times Higher Education. She also writes on contemporary artists. Her most recent publication on contemporary art is Remote Performances in Nature and Architecture (Ashgate, 2015).