Wendy Erskine’s debut novel The Benefactors was published by Sceptre in 2025 and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and was chosen by Waterstones as their Irish Book of the Year. Her two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move, are published by The Stinging Fly Press and Picador. She was chosen by the Observer as a Best Debut Novelist of 2025 and has been listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Prize. She was awarded the Butler Prize for Literature and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize. Her writing on arts of all kinds, from sculpture to body-building, has been published in the Guardian and the Quietus among others, and for PVA Books she edited well I just kind of like it, an anthology about art in the home and the home as art. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a frequent broadcaster, interviewer and willing collaborator on all manner of projects. She is also a secondary school teacher in Belfast.
