Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce (born 1962) is a British writer. She has written plays for BBC Radio 4, and jointly won the 2007 Tinniswood Award for her radio play To Be a Pilgrim. Her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was on the longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, and in December 2012 she was awarded the "New Writer of the Year" award by the National Book Awards for this book.

She had an earlier career as an actress, and has said that between her first writing ambitions aged 14 and the writing of her first novel she was "a young woman, a mother, an actress, a writer of radio drama - not to mention a terrible waitress in a wine bar, a door-to-door sales girl for one morning, and an assistant in a souvenir shop".

She is married to actor Paul Venables, and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and four children.

She is the sister of actress Emily Joyce.

Books The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012, Doubleday: ) Perfect (2013, Doubleday: ) The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (2014, Doubleday: ) A Snow Garden and Other Stories (2015, Doubleday: ) The Music Shop (2017, Doubleday: ) Miss Benson's Beetle (11 June 2020, Penguin: ) Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North (20 October 2022, Doubleday: )

Theatre

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (book of stage musical, based on the novel) - opened in May 2025 at Minerva Theatre, Chichester

Awards Tinniswood Award, 2007 (joint award), for To Be A Pilgrim French Literary Award ("Prix Littéraire des Jeunes Européens, 2014 France) for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, 2021, for Miss Benson's Beetle

Reference List