Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh. She studied Law and French at Edinburgh University and Theatre under Tadeusz Kantor in Cracow, Poland. She co-founded an award winning theatre company and wrote and produced plays which toured to London, Berlin, Bonn, Rotterdam, Dublin, Glasgow and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She wrote drama and book reviews for the Scotsman, and has written for the Independent, Time Out, and the Guardian. For work in progress on Chasing Lost Time she won a Hyam Wingate Award, an Authors Foundation Award and was shortlisted for the Alistair Horne Fellowship at Oxford University. She lives in Scotland with her husband and family. Chasing Lost Time was published by Chatto and Windus in 2014 and Vintage in 2016: by Farar Straus and Giroux in 2016, and Picador US in 2023. It was shortlisted for a Lambda Award in New York in 2016.
The Queen’s Lender was published in 2022 and paperback in 2024. For work in progress she won a Hawthornden Fellowship 2017 and a Lavigny International Fellowship 2019. The novel was listed for the HWA Debut Crown in 2022.
