Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English. Sarah has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Sarah's novel Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. Both Fingersmith and The Night Watch were shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes. In 2003, Sarah was named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers' Association and Waterstone's Booksellers. Sarah was also chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. Sarah's novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and… Fingersmith have all been adapted for television. Her novel, The Paying Guest, is a 2014 New York Time bestseller. Sarah Waters lives in south London.