Zoom Business & Claire Gradidge

Claire Gradidge was born and brought up in Romsey. After a career as, among other thing, a nurse and a school librarian, she went to the University of Winchester, where she graduated in 2009 with a first class honours BA in Creative Writing. In January 2018, she was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing. The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox (her first published novel) was written as the creative element of her PhD study. An early version of the opening 3,000 words was highly commended in the Good Housekeeping magazine competition in 2012.

She has taught at the University of Winchester as an Associate Lecturer for 8 years and has also had some short fictions and poems published in South, Orbis and Vortex. She has been married for over 40 years and has two adult sons.

The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox was the winner of the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller in 2019.