Author guide

Samantha Harvey Books in Order

Samantha Harvey is a British author and Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Born in Kent in 1975, she studied philosophy before completing an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa. She is the author of five novels—The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief, The Western Wind, and Orbital—and the memoir The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Her work has been shortlisted or longlisted for several major literary prizes. The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Prize, and Orbital won the 2024 Booker Prize and the Hawthornden Prize.

literary fictionhistorical fictionspeculative fictionmemoirnonfiction

Catalog record updated August 25, 2026.

Samantha Harvey's Newest Book

Orbital

novel · First published 2023

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

Not sure where to begin?

Start with one of these

Orbital

Her Booker Prize-winning novel and the most recent entry point into her work.

The Wilderness

Her debut novel and the starting point for reading her fiction chronologically.

Outside the series

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Novels (5)

The Wilderness
novel · 2009

It’s Jake’s birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life – his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his mid-sixties, and he isn’t quite the man he…
All Is Song
novel · 2012

It is late summer in London. Leonard Deppling returns to the capital from Scotland, where he has spent the past year nursing his dying father. Missing from the funeral was his older brother William, who lives in the north of the city with…
Dear Thief
novel · 2014

“You were going to work your way into my marriage and you were going to call its new three-way shape holy,” writes the unnamed narrator of Dear Thief. The thief is Nina, or Butterfly, who disappeared eighteen years earlier and who is…
The Western Wind
novel · 2018

15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village…
Orbital
novel · 2023

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it…

Nonfiction (1)

The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping
memoir · 2020

A Vulture Best Book of 2020 This genre-defying debut memoir by Betty Trask Prize winner, Samantha Harvey, weaves a tapestry of confessional anguish, flash fiction, cathartic poetry, and feverish observations on politics and psychology in…

Frequently asked questions about Samantha Harvey

Who is Samantha Harvey?

Samantha Harvey is a British novelist and nonfiction author, born in Kent in 1975. She lives in the UK.

Sources: thebookerprizes.com (opens in a new tab)penguinrandomhouse.com (opens in a new tab)

Where was Samantha Harvey born and educated?

She was born in Kent and studied philosophy before completing an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Sources: penguinrandomhouse.com (opens in a new tab)bathspa.ac.uk (opens in a new tab)

What does Samantha Harvey do besides writing novels?

Harvey is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, where she teaches novel and prose-writing workshops on the MA course.

Source: bathspa.ac.uk (opens in a new tab)

What influences Samantha Harvey’s writing?

Her work is shaped by philosophical questions about memory, time, identity and faith. She has cited Graham Greene, José Saramago and Ted Hughes as literary models, and has described her mother’s work as a ghostwriter as a formative influence.

Sources: theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)theguardian.com (opens in a new tab)

What awards has Samantha Harvey won?

Orbital won the 2024 Booker Prize and the Hawthornden Prize, while The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Prize.

Sources: thebookerprizes.com (opens in a new tab)dublinliteraryaward.ie (opens in a new tab)societyofauthors.org (opens in a new tab)