Stevie Davies is a Welsh novelist, essayist and short story writer. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998, and is also a fellow of the Welsh Academy. Her novel The Element of Water was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, and won the Wales Book of the Year in 2002. Early life Stevie Davies was born in Salisbury, England, but lived in Wales from when she was a week old. The Davies family lived in Morriston, a large town located within the city of Swansea. The only child of an RAF officer, Davies left Wales at the age of two and spent a nomadic childhood in Egypt, Germany and Scotland in the 1950s. After studying at the University of Manchester, Davies went on to lecture in the English department there. Concurrently she married Douglas Brooks another lecturer at Manchester who adopted the name Douglas Brooks-Davies. Career Davies has published widely in the fields of fiction, literary criticism, biography and popular history. Her non-fiction work includes titles on the Brontë family, John Milton and Henry Vaughan. Davies' first novel, Boy Blue, was published by The Women's Press in 1987, and won the Fawcett Society Book Prize later that year. In 2001, Davies' novel The Element of Water was longlisted for the Booker Prize. It went on to win the 2002 Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year award. Personal life Davies has three grown children, a son and two daughters. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University, and lives in Mumbles. Publications Fiction 1987: Boy Blue, The Women's Press 1990: Primavera, The Women's Press 1992: Arms and the Girl''', The Women's Press 1994: Closing the Book, The Women's Press 1996: Four Dreamers and Emily, The Women's Press 1997: The Web of Belonging, The Women's Press 1999: Impassioned Clay, The Women's Press 2001: The Element of Water, The Women's Press 2004: Kith & Kin, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2007: The Eyrie, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2010: Into Suez, Parthian 2013: Awakening, Parthian 2016: Equivocator, Parthian 2017: Arrest Me, for I Have Run Away, Parthian Non-fiction 1978: Renaissance Views of Man, Manchester University Press 1983: Emily Brontë: The Artist as a Free Woman, Carcanet 1983: Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost: Milton's Politics and Christian Liberty, University of Missouri Press 1986: The Idea of Woman in Renaissance English Literature: The Feminine Reclaimed, The Harvester Press