Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire in the South West of England. Accounts of her and essays by her have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful, The Moth, The Colony, The Irish Times, The White Review and Gorse. She was awarded the inaugural White Story Short Story Award in 2013 and has received grants from the Arts Council of Ireland and Galway City Council. Pond is her first fiction book: it was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2016 and is being translated into French, Norwegian and Dutch, among other languages.