Richard Skinner is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His first novel, The Red Dancer, was published in 2001 by Faber in the UK and Ecco in the US and has been translated into six languages. His second novel, The Velvet Gentleman, is forthcoming and has already been sold to Japanese, French and Italian publishers. He won an Arts Council Writers’ Award in 2004. Richard is an Associate Tutor at Goldsmiths College, London, where he teaches on the MA in Creative and Life Writing. He has also reviewed books for the Financial Times and The Guardian. He has been a reader for The Literary Consultancy since 1999 and has been involved in numerous writing workshops, courses and seminars for TLC, Spread The Word and the Skyros Centre in Greece.