"History is a treasure chest of stories. I love them."

Sara Sheridan works in a wide range of media and genres but mostly historical and especially the stories of women. She loves exploring where our culture comes from. In 2018 she remapped Scotland according to women's history. Tipped in Company and GQ magazines, she was nominated for a Young Achiever Award. She has received a Scottish Library Award and has been shortlisted for the Saltire Book Prize and the Wilbur Smith Prize. Her work was included in the David Hume Institute's Summer Reading list 2019. She has sat on the committee for the Society of Authors in Scotland (where she lives) and on the board of '26' the campaign for the importance of words. She took part in 3 '26 Treasures' exhibitions at the V&A, London, The National Museum of Scotland and the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. She occasionally blogs for the Guardian about her writing life, the Huffington Post about her activism as a writer and a feminist and puts her hand up to being a 'twitter evangelist'. From time to time she appears on radio, and has reported for BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent from both Tallin and Sharjah. Sara is a member of the Society of Authors and the Historical Writers Association. A self-confessed 'word nerd' her favourite book is 'Water Music' by TC Boyle. In 2016 she cofounded feminist perfume brand, REEK: artefacts from the project are now held at the National Museums of Scotland and the Glasgow Women's Library.

When I was eighteen I went to Cambridge University to study history. MY first assignment was Queen Victoria and the media. I went to the library to consult her Diaries. She wrote sixty two million words in her life time and as I pulled out the first leather bound volume I felt overwhelmed by its size and weight. But then it fell open at the entry for 3rd Nov 1839, " I saw me dearest Albert who was all wet in his white cashmere breeches with nothing on underneath." As I laughed out loud, the other readers looked at me in disapproval. Queen Victoria, I decided then, was not the boot faced old bag with a bonnet I had imagined, but a woman after my own heart.

All my novels have been set in the Victorian era: The American Heiress is about a dollar princess called Cora Cash who marriesan English duke; The Fortune Hunter is the story of Sisi, the beautiful Austrian Empress who came to England to hunt - in the novel Sisi meets Victoria. I enjoyed writing this encounter so much - Victoria"s voice came so easily to me, that I decided that my next next novel would be about the young Victoria. But as I started writing it, I thought it would make a great tv drama, which is how I ended up writing the PBS Masterpiece series Victoria, as well as my novel Victoria, a novel of a young Queen.

When I am not immersed in the nineteenth century, I live in London with three dogs, two daughters and a husband.