Frances Liardet is a child of children of the Second World War. She has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and studied Arabic at Oxford, before traveling to Cairo to translate modern Egyptian novelists, including Naguib Mahfouz and Edwar al-Kharrat. Liardet currently lives in Somerset, England, with her husband and daughter, and helps to run a summer writing session called Bootcamp. We Must Be Brave was her American debut.