Candy Harper is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Creative Writing for Young People. She grew up in a rather small house in Oxfordshire and as the fourth of five sisters found it was often hard to get a word in edgeways, so she started writing down her best ideas. It's probably not a coincidence that her first 'book' featured an orphan living in a deserted castle. She has been a Waterstone's bookseller, a teacher and the person who puts those little stickers on apples. Candy is married and has a daughter named after Philip Pullman's Lyra.