Michelle Lovric is a novelist, editor, poet and teacher.

Her first novel, Carnevale, is the story of the painter Cecilia Cornaro, described by The Times as the possessor of ‘the most covetable life’ in fiction in 2001.

This was followed in 2004 by The Floating Book, in which a chorus of characters relates the perilous beginning of the print industry in Venice. The book explores the translation of raw emotion into saleable merchandise from the points of view of poets, editors, publishers – and their lovers. A London Arts award winner, The Floating Book was also selected as a WH Smith ‘Read of the Week’.

The Remedy, a literary murder–mystery set against the background of the quack medicine industry in the eighteenth century, was long–listed for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction.

The Book of Human Skin, published in 2010 by Bloomsbury in the UK and by Penguin in Canada, was a TV Book Club choice in August 2011.

The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, a novel about hair and betrayal, was published in summer 2014 by Bloomsbury in both the UK and USA.

Lovric has also written six novels for children, all published by Orion: The Undrowned Child (2009), The Mourning Emporium (2010), Talina in the Tower (2012), The Fate in the Box (2013), The Wishing Bones (2019) and The Water’s Daughter (2020).

She also co-written, with Gemma Dowler, the acclaimed memoir My Sister Milly, published by Michael Joseph in June 2017, an Amazon number 1 and a Sunday Times best-seller.

Lovric has combined her fiction work with editing, designing and producing literary anthologies including her own translations of Latin and Italian poetry. Her book Love Letters was a New York Times best–seller.

She has reviewed for publications including The Times and writes travel articles about Venice, campaigning against the cruise–ships and tourist monoculture. She has also featured in several BBC radio documentaries about Venice, and appeared in BBC TV’s Great Continental Railway Journeys with Michael Portillo. She is one of twenty-eight writers of historical fiction who contribute to The History Girls blog every month.

Lovric has presented literary events at the Ateneo Veneto, the Wellcome Collection and the Edinburgh International Book Fair.

She has taught Guardian Masterclasses in How to Write for Children and is a consultant editor for The Writers Workshop and The Faber Academy.

She served as a Royal Literary Fund fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art from 2010 to 2013, and from 2014–16 she was one of two RLF Fellows at Kings College Postgraduate Programme in London. From October 2021, she has been appointed a Lector for the Royal Literary Fund, with a Reading Round group in Bankside, London.

Her poetry has been placed in many competitions including the Bridport, the National and the Troubadour.

In 2014, she was appointed a Companion of the Guild of St George.

She lives in London and Venice and is now working on two further children’s novels set in Venice and London as well as an adult novel set in Venice, South America and the Lofoten Islands.

Read more on the Interviews page.

E-mail Michelle Lovric at
m l at (use @ symbol) michellelovric dot (use full stop)  com
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