Wendy Perriam is an English novelist and graduate of the University of Oxford who started writing at the age of five and wrote her first "novel" at eleven. Perriam then went silent as she struggled through a long period of depression, having been expelled from her Catholic school for heresy and told she was in Satan's power. Many of her early novels explore the abuses and, conversely, the great attractions of Catholicism. Perriam's work is also renowned for its explicit sexual content - perhaps a natural consequence of her total sexual ignorance at school. In 2002, she won the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award 2002 for Tread softly. Wendy has appeared frequently on TV and radio, and was once a regular contributor to the radio series "Stop the Week" & "Fourth Column". Her work has been critically acclaimed for its psychological insight and for its power to disturb as well as divert. Described by the Sunday Telegraph as "one of the most interesting unsung novelists of her generation", Perriam is set to release her 22nd publication on31 August, 2010. This new novel, Broken Places, explores the personal and professional challenges of a 40-something librarian, forced to hide his mysterious background and his mortifying fears. The book combines laugh-out-loud comedy with a probing investigation of fear, and includes a compassionate but critical look at children growing up in care. Perriam's greatest fan, Fay Weldon, insists "Wendy Perriam was born to write...Her work refreshes and exhilirates." Perriam has been twice married and has a daughter and two step-children. Her daughter died of tongue cancer in 2008. Wendy Perriam lives in London.