 Boyt was educated at Channing and at Camden School for Girls and read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, graduating in 1992.Working variously at a PR agency, and a literary agency, she completed her first novel, "The Normal Man", which was published in 1995 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.She returned to university to do a Masters in Anglo American Literary Relations at University College London studying the works of Henry James and the poet John Berryman.