Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is, to my mind, one of the most genre-agile storytellers writing in English. Her debut, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, snatched the Whitbread Award outright, and she has since moved fluidly between family saga, historical fiction and detective novels, weaving in postmodern and magical-realist textures without ever feeling gimmicky. Honored with an MBE in 2011, she has the credentials, but it is her refusal to stay in one lane that I find thrilling. Reading her, I get the sense of a writer who treats form as a playground, and her pages are genuinely hard to put down.

Name (English)

Kate Atkinson

Name (Japanese)

ケイト・アトキンソン

Reading

けいと・あときんそん

Born

December 20, 1951 (age 74)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Rabbit

Origin

York, United Kingdom

Occupation

screenwriter / novelist / playwright / journalist / short story writer

University

University of Dundee

Awards & achievements

• 2011 Member of the Order of the British Empire
• 1998 E. M. Forster Award
• 2010 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2005 Saltire Awards
• 2013 Not the Booker Prize

• Official sitehttps://www.kateatkinson.co.uk
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate%20Atkinson%20(writer)
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%83%88%E3%82%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BD%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q272622

Tags

• screenwriter
• novelist
• playwright

Last updated

2026-06-21

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.