Tiffany Murray grew up in Wales. She studied at New York University and the University of East Anglia, where she gained her doctorate and taught. Her first novel, Happy Accidents (2005), is the coming-of-age tale of 11-year-old Kate Happy, set on a rural farm on the Welsh-English border, and has drawn comparison with Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Her second novel, Diamond Star Halo (2010), tells the story of Halo Llewelyn and her unconventional family who run a recording studio in rural Wales. It is a story of first love and rock n' roll and drew comparisons with Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle. Both novels were shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and Guardian critics selected Diamond Star Halo as one of the best of the fiction year, 2010. Murray has had short fiction and non-fiction published in various magazines and collections, and features in national newspapers including The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian. In 2003 she edited with Helon Habila Once upon a time in the Pretext series for Norwich Pen & Inc. She teaches creative writing for adults and schools, at The National Writers' Centre for Wales, and for the Arvon Foundation, and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glamorgan. Tiffany lives in Wales and Portugal.