About Lauren
Lauren grew up in Yorkshire and studied at St Hilda’s College Oxford. She holds an MA in Victorian Literature from Leeds University, and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize. In 2017 she completed a PhD in English Literature with a thesis on vampires and the gothic of writing.
She is represented by Jenny Hewson at Lutyens & Rubinstein.
Her first novel The Quick was published by Random House (UK and USA), Fazi (Italy) and Actes Sud (France). She has written for a variety of publications, including Stylist and Electric Sheep.
Education
PhD, Durham University
English Literature: Dracula’s Inky Shadows: The Vampire Gothic of Writing
MA, University of East Anglia
Creative Writing (Curtis Brown Prize Winner)
MA, University of Leeds
Victorian Literature
MA (Oxon), University of Oxford
English
Praise for The Quick
“By Page 100, when the first neck is about to be bitten, The Quick drops its cloak and becomes a good old-fashioned vampire novel. . . . [It’s full of] wonderful inventions, while still providing the torn collars and hungry looks the genre demands. . . . What fun.”
— New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
“The Quick is ambitious in both scope and structure. . . . Her London is exquisitely detailed. . . . [Owen] inhabits the breadth and panorama of the Victorian tale.”
— Washington Post
“An intricate, sinister epic . . . Owen proves a master at anticipating readers’ thoughts about future happenings and then crumbling them into dust. Her world building is exceptional, and readers will simultaneously embrace and shrink from the atmosphere’s elegant ghastliness.”
— Booklist
“A suspenseful, gloriously atmospheric first novel, and a feast of gothic storytelling that is impossible to resist.”
— Kate Atkinson
“A sly and glittering addition to the literature of the macabre.”
— Hilary Mantel
“The book’s energy, its wide reach and rich detail make it a confident example of the ‘unputdownable’ novel.”
— Economist