To Capture What We Cannot Keep (Colin) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1963
• Where—London, England, UK
• Raised—Scotland
• Education—B.A., University of Glasgow; Ph.D., Strathclyde University
• Currently—lives in Glasgow, Scotland


Beatrice Colin is a British novelist and radio dramatist who lives in Glasgow, Scotland. She has several novels under her belt, including two for children, and has written original plays for BBC Radio 4.

Born in London, England, Colin's family moved to Scotland when she was still a child. Her parents come from a line of Russian-Jews, who converted to Christianity in the 19th Century and departed Russia during the 1917 revolution.

One of her great-great-grandmothers had been a bestselling novelist in Russia at the turn of the 20th Century, and her great-aunt, Nina, had been a film actress in Germany between the first and second world wars. Nina became the inspiration behind Colin's 2008 novel, The Glimmer Palace (the UK title is The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite).

Colin attended the University of Glasgow where she studied English; following graduation, she worked as a journalist for the arts & features pages of the Scotsman, Sunday Herald, and the Guardian. She returned to school, earning her doctorate in 2010 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Her doctoral dissertation argued for the potential of historical fiction to reclaim individuals who, due to the absence of diaries or memoirs, have never been recognized through the lens of history.

Novels
Colin's novels include To Capture What We Cannot Keep (2016), The Songwriter (2010), The Glimmer Palace (2008, US title), Disappearing Act (2002), and Nude Untitled (2000). Her two children's novels include Pyrate's Boy (2013) and My Invisible Sister (2010), which has been adapted to film by Disney.

Plays and short stories
Colin has written extensively for radio—both adaptions and original plays—on BBC Radio 4. Perhaps her best known play is The True Life of Bonnie Parker (2013), which was broadcast as a Woman’s Hour serial.

The author's short stories have been broadcast and published in anthologies and literary magazines such as Ontario Review and the London Magazine.

Beatrice is currently a lecturer in creative writing at Strathclyde University. (Author bio adapted from The Scotsman and the author's website .)