Stephanie Merritt

Who is Stephanie Merritt?

Stephanie Jane Merritt is an English critic and feature writer who has contributed to various publications including The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman, New Humanist and Die Welt. She was Deputy Literary Editor of The Observer from 1998 to 2005 and currently writes for The Observer and The Guardian, in addition to writing novels.

Merritt graduated in English from Queens' College, Cambridge in 1996.

Merritt's first novel Gaveston won a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in 2002. Her second novel was Real, about a struggling young playwright, for which she was also commissioned to write the screenplay. In 2010, Heresy was published, her first novel in the series of historical fiction thrillers featuring Giordano Bruno, under the pseudonym S. J. Parris. It was followed by Prophecy and Sacrilege. The fourth novel in the series is called Treachery and was published on 27 February 2014.

She has also written a memoir, The Devil Within, published by Vermilion in 2008 and shortlisted for the Mind Book Award, which discusses her experiences living with depression.