Laura Dietz was born in Minneapolis in 1976. She studied English and sciences at Stanford and Oxford. She moved to England for good in 1999, completing the return leg of a trip her family began in 1620. Her work includes themes of science, self-image and nature vs. nurture – inspired in part by her experiences as an identical twin. In 2006, she received the Arts Council of England's Escalator award for emerging writers. Her first novel, In the Tenth House, is published by Crown (Random House). Her novel in progress, The Spells for Going Forth By Day, concerns three cousins, two betrayals, and an antiquities scam in 1906 Egypt. She lectures on writing at Anglia Ruskin University, where she also convenes the MA in Creative Writing, and at other graduate programmes in the U.S. and UK. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and daughter.