Jennifer Kavanagh worked in publishing for nearly thirty years, the last fourteen as an independent literary agent. In the past twenty years she has run a community centre in London's East End, worked with homeless people and refugees, and set up microcredit programmes in London and in Africa. She has also worked as a research associate for the Prison Reform Trust, and has published ten books of non-fiction and two previous novels. She is an associate tutor at Woodbrooke Quaker study centre, a Churchill Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of a community of fools.