Kate Mosse - Career

Career

In 1996 she published her first novel, Eskimo Kissing, about a young, adopted woman searching for her background. This was followed in 1998 by the thriller Crucifix Lane. From 1998 up to 2001, she held her post as the executive director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. Meanwhile she also remained engaged in research work for the first of a series of timeslip historical adventure novels set in southwest France in the past and present day. In 2005, the first of the series, Labyrinth, was published. It has sold millions of copies throughout the world, was the bestselling title in the UK for 2006 and won the Richard & Judy Best Book at the British Book Awards 2006. Television rights have been sold to Scott Free and Tandem Communications and is filming in Autumn 2011. The international cast includes John Hurt, Janet Suzman, Jessica Brown Findlay and Sebastian Stan.

A regular guest on UK radio and television, she presented the BBC Four literary chat show Readers' and Writers' Roadshow and appears on the BBC Breakfast News and BBC2's The Review Show. She is a guest presenter for A Good Read on BBC Radio 4.

In 1996 she co-founded the annual Orange Prize for Fiction, of which she is also the Honorary Director. The Prize celebrates international fiction throughout the world written by women and is anonymously endowed. Previous winners include Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, Small Island by Andrea Levy and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

In 2000 she was named European Woman of Achievement for her contribution to the arts.

In October 2007, the second novel in the Languedoc Trilogy was published. Sepulchre was also a No.1 bestseller in the UK and an international bestseller. The third in the Languedoc trilogy, Citadel has been published in October 2012.

Mosse has also contributed a number of essays and stories to anthologies and collections, including Modern Delight (a book inspired by J. B. Priestley's 1949 book Delight) published by Waterstone's to raise money for Dyslexia Action and the London Library; Little Black Dress (edited by Susie Maguire); Midsummer Nights (edited by Jeanette Winterson), a collection to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Glyndebourne Opera House in East Sussex; The Best Little Book Club in Town in aid of Breast Cancer Care and Why Willows Weep (edited by Tracy Chevalier) in aid of the Woodland Trust (2011).

She writes a regular column for the book trade magazine The Bookseller and is one of the authors leading the campaign against the closure of the UK library service.

In October 2009 she released her latest novel The Winter Ghosts, based on a novella Kate had contributed to the Quick Reads Initiative.

Her first play, Syrinx, was part of the SkyArts Theatre Live project, devised by Sandi Toksvig. First performed in July 2009, it won a broadcasting press publicity award that same year.

Kate Mosse's second play Endpapers was part of the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six. Her monolgue was inspired by the Book of Revelation, the final book in the King James Bible

In 2012, she published an anniversary book to celebrate fifty years of the Chichester Festival Theatre. Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty is published by the crowd funding publishing company Unbound.