Emily Barr

Emily Venie Barr (born 10 October 1971) is a British travel writer and novelist. She debuted with the novel Backpack in 2001. In addition to travel fiction, she has also written young adult novels and a horror.

Early life Barr spent her early childhood in York and then grew up in Norfolk. She attended Norwich High School for Girls before going on to study at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Career Barr had been working as a journalist for The Guardian, before embarking on a year-long work trip around the world in the late 1990s, writing a column as she went. While in Thailand, she appeared as an extra in the film The Beach. The journey inspired her first novel, Backpack, set in Southeast Asia, and published in 2001 by Headline Publishing Group. The book won the WHSmith New Talent Award in 2002. It was followed by Baggage, Cuban Heels in 2003, and Atlantic Shift in 2004. In 2009, she published The Life You Want, a sequel to Backpack.

In 2014, Barr released a novella, Blackout, for the Quick Reads series. Her first young adult novel, The One Memory of Flora Banks, was published by Penguin Books as an ebook in 2016 and paperback in 2017. It has been translated into 26 languages and has sold over 50,000 copies. Barr followed it with another young adult book, The Truth and Lies of Ella Black in 2018. Her first horror novel, We Hear Voices, was released in late 2020 only in the US under the pen name Evie Green.

Barr has taught creative writing at the Falmouth University and the Faber Academy, among others.

Personal life In 1994, Barr was at the centre of a scandal where she was romantically involved with married Conservative MP Hartley Booth while working as a researcher at the House of Commons. The resulting press attention led to Booth's resignation from his position as parliamentary private secretary to Douglas Hogg, although he claimed that no sexual impropriety had taken place.

Barr has lived in France, and is now based in Falmouth, Cornwall with her husband Craig and their three children. She met her husband in China, while travelling around the world.