Lionel Shriver

Born Margaret Ann Shriver in North Carolina, she adopted the name Lionel as a teenager; she worked for years as a caterer while writing in relative obscurity before her breakthrough, and has long been based in London.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003), a series of letters in which a mother reconstructs her son's disturbing childhood after he kills classmates and family members in a school massacre, won the Orange Prize in 2005 and was adapted into a 2011 film starring Tilda Swinton.

She is a regular, deliberately provocative columnist for the Spectator and Harper's Magazine on politics and culture, and continues to write fiction alongside her journalism.