Greyhound Literary

Michelle Lovric

Michelle Lovric writes novels for adults and children; also memoir and poetry. She has particular interests in Venice, art, trauma and the history of medicine. 

Her first novel, Carnevale, is the story of the portrait-painter Cecilia Cornaro, described by The Times as the possessor of ‘the most covetable life’ in fiction in 2001. In The Floating Book, a chorus of characters relates the perilous birth of printing in Venice. Lovric’s third novel, The Remedy, a literary murder-mystery, was longlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction. The Book of Human Skin takes on Holy Anorexia, psychopathy and a very unusual form of bibliomania. It was chosen by the Channel 4 TV Book Club as a Summer Read. Her fifth adult novel was The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, about seven impoverished Irish girls with torrents of troublesome hair. Her first novel for children, The Undrowned Child, was described by the Independent as ‘gripping, elegant and original’. It was followed by The Mourning Emporium, Talina in the Tower, The Fate in the Box, The Wishing Bones and The Water’s Daughter.

She worked with Milly Dowler’s sister Gemma to produce a memoir of the girl and her family. My Sister Milly, published in July 2017, was both an Amazon No.1 and a Sunday Times bestseller. 

She has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Kings College London’s Graduate School, and runs a Reading Round group in Bankside London. Her poetry has been recognised in the Bridport and other major prizes.  

She lives in London and Venice, and is involved in environmental and community activism in both places. She is a Companion of the Guild of St George.