The Emperor's Last Island

Julia Blackburn

Julia Blackburn has written five books of non-fiction - Charles Waterton, The Emperor's Last Island, Daisy Bates in the Desert, Old Man Goya and With Billie - a family memoir, The Three of Us, which won the 2009 J. R. Ackerley Award and, most recently, Thin Paths, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. She has also written the novel The Leper's Companions, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the author of seventeen short stories specially commisioned by BBC Radio, a selection of which were published in My Animals and Other Family, and four radio plays, including The Spellbound Horses.