Amanda Dalton was born in 1957 in Coventry. After working in Leicestershire comprehensive schools and as a youth theatre leader, she was a deputy headteacher for five years. In 1994 she was awarded an East Midlands Arts Board writers’ bursary, and in 1995 she completed an M.A. in Writing at the University of Glamorgan. After organising writers’ courses for four years for the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank in West Yorkshire, she is now Education Director at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. How to Disappear is her first book-length collection. Her radio version of Room of Leaves, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in autumn 1998, has been shortlisted for the Prix Italia award for radio drama.