GILLIAN STERN

Gillian Stern volunteered to read the slush pile at a literary agency while on maternity leave 25 years ago, where she found a novel that went on to get a publishing deal and win several awards. That feeling of helping to bring a debut novelist into the world never quite left her, so she quit her job and set up as a freelance structural and developmental editor of fiction and non-fiction. Since then, she has discovered, edited and championed many debut novelists, several of whom have gone on to publish bestsellers. She was a judge on the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for several years. Gillian combines this work with ghost-writing and has written several Sunday Times bestsellers, one of her books even being turned into a West End musical.