Meet Writing a Novel’s Guest Tutors

Nicola Dinan

Guest tutor for Writing a Novel (evening)

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. She studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University before training as a lawyer. Bellies, her debut, was shortlisted for the Mo Siewcharran prize. Nicola is a graduate of Faber Academy’s Writing a Novel course.

Sara Jafari

Guest tutor for Writing a Novel (daytime)

Sara Jafari is the author of The Mismatch and People Change (Penguin Random House). She is also a contributor to the anthologies Who’s Loving You (Trapeze) and I Will Not Be Erased (Walker Books).

She has worked in publishing for over nine years, most recently working as an Editor at Penguin Random House, where she commissioned and edited fiction and non-fiction. She currently works as a freelance book editor for major publishers and is pursuing a masters at Goldsmiths, University of London.

S J Watson

Guest tutor for Writing a Novel (Newcastle)

S.J. Watson is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers Before I Go to Sleep (Doubleday 2011), winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Award for Best Debut Novel and the Galaxy National Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year, and Second Life (Doubleday 2015). He was born in the Midlands and studied physics at Birmingham University, later working as an audiologist in the NHS, before enrolling on the first Faber Academy ‘Writing a Novel’ course in 2009.

He now lives in Brighton. The film adaption of Before I Go to Sleep, directed by Rowan Joffe, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, was released in 2014. S.J. Watson’s latest book, Final Cut, was published to acclaim in 2020.

Follow him at sjwatson.substack.com.

Diana Evans

Guest tutor for Writing a Novel (evening)

Diana Evans is the award-winning, bestselling author of A House for Alice, Ordinary People, The Wonder and 26a. Her prize nominations include the Guardian and Commonwealth Best First Book awards, and she was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers. A book of the year in the New Yorker, Ordinary People received the South Bank Sky Arts Award, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. A House for Alice is the critically acclaimed follow-up.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Guest tutor for Writing a Novel (daytime)

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of Harmless Like You – the winner of The Authors’ Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR 2017 Great Read.

Her second novel, Starling Days, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. Her third novel The Sleep Watcher was released in 2023.

Her short work has appeared in several places including Granta, Guernica, The Atlantic, and NPR’s Selected Shorts. She is the editor of the Go Home! anthology.

Eliza Clark

Guest tutor for Writing a Novel (Newcastle)

Eliza Clark is from Newcastle and lives in London. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s ‘Young Writers’ Talent Fund’. Her debut novel, Boy Parts, was released in 2020, and was made Blackwell’s Fiction Book of the Year. In 2022, Eliza was chosen as a finalist for the Women’s Prize Futures Award for writers under thirty-five and was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Her second novel, Penance, was published by Faber & Faber in July 2023.