Ann Schlee is a novelist whose work includes Ask Me No Questions (1976), The Vandal (winner of the 1978 Guardian Award for young fiction) and Rhine Journey, which was short-listed for the 1981 Booker Prize. Many of her novels are set in the past, but in surroundings which she knows well: London, or those parts of Africa which she remembers from childhood. Jane Gardam, writing about The Time in Aderra (1996), says: 'She writes historical novels that are more advanced, more interested in feminism, for instance, than her contemporaries who write of the twentieth century... Ann Schlee's wider vision is adventurous and sunlit'. Ann has taught English in the UK and America, and worked for many years with adults in creative writing and memoir classes at Morley College in London and Rewley House in Oxford. She has judged in a number of literary competitions including the Somerset Maugham Award, the David Higham and the Booker. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Ann now lives in Berkshire with her husband, the painter Nick Schlee.