Elizabeth Day

The daughter of Tom Day and his wife Christine,[1] Day was born in the south of England. She was raised in Northern Ireland,[2] when her father became a general surgeon at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.[3] Interested in being a writer from the age of seven, she realised journalism was a preparation for her long-term goal, and was a columnist for the Derry Journal at the age of 12.[4] Day was educated at Methodist College Belfast and Malvern St James Girls School in Worcestershire,[5] and read History at Queens' College, Cambridge,[6] gaining a double first in History.[1]

After her graduation, Day worked for the Evening Standard on the Londoners' Diary[7] for a year before becoming a news reporter on The Sunday Telegraph, initially on a three-month trial.[4] While working for the Telegraph, Day won the Young Journalist of the Year Award at the British Press Awards in 2004.[8] Subsequently, Day wrote for Elle and The Mail on Sunday.[3][9]

From 2007 until 25 March 2016, Day was a feature writer for The Observer.[10] In the UK Press Awards for journalism published during 2012, an event organised by the Society of Editors, Day gained a commendation in the "Feature Writer of the Year (Broadsheet)" category.[11][12]

How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is a podcast that celebrates the things that haven’t gone right. Every week, a new interviewee explores what their failures taught them about how to succeed better. Since its foundation in 2018, it has been nominated twice by the British Podcast Awards.[13] [14] Noticeable guests include Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jamie Dornan,Andrew Scott (actor), Gloria Steinem, Malcolm Gladwell, Dame Kelly Holmes, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Alain de Botton, Nadia Hussain and Bernardine Evaristo to name a few.

Day's first three novels were Scissors Paper Stone (2012), Home Fires (2013) and Paradise City (2015). The debut novel won the Betty Trask Award for first novels by authors under the age of 35. It recounts marred family relationships affected by a history of child abuse from a male lead character. Of Scissors Paper Stone, Melissa Katsoulis in The Sunday Telegraph felt that "it indicates a thoughtful and conscientious new voice in fiction."[15] In The Guardian, Catherine Taylor was less impressed believing "the icy remoteness at the heart of the book ultimately disengages the reader – as if authorial control has been retained at the expense of a vital, necessary spark".[16]

From a belief that women's responses to the First World War had been insufficiently explored as a subject, Day wrote Home Fires. It combines two connected female-centred stories relating to the aftermath of that war and the more recent conflict in South Sudan,[17] as well as the difficulties responding to the old age of loved ones.[4] Viv Groskop, in her review for The Observer, felt that the author's "great strength is her psychological insight" and that Day's work of fiction is "a beautifully written novel whose quietly discomfiting tone stays with you for a long while afterwards."[18]

Paradise City was published in the UK in spring 2015.[19] Amanda Craig in The Daily Telegraph described it as "an advance which, while retaining her sensitivity, signals the emergence of a literary novelist whose optimism and generosity should gain her a much bigger audience."[20] Charles Shafaieh in The New York Times wrote that Day's descriptions of London "reveal her sensitivity to nuanced detail. But the way the priorities of Paradise City so accurately represent the troubling state of today’s Britain is an unlikely, and far from ideal, testament to her skill as a writer."[21] Day's first three novels were published in the UK by Bloomsbury.[19]

Of The Party (2017), Lucy Scholes in The Observer writes that is "a well-paced slow-burner of a literary thriller" and concludes her review by commenting that the book is "[b]rimming with betrayal, corruption and hypocrisy, The Party is a gripping page-turner".[22] The novel was published by Fourth Estate in Summer 2017 in the UK and Little, Brown in the United States.

Day's regular podcast led to a non-fiction book How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong which was published in 2019.[23] Katie Glass in The Sunday Times considered it "a fascinating, thoughtful, honest, often moving series of interviews with successful people about the moments when their lives went wrong."[24]

Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong (October 2020), Day's latest release, brings together all the lessons she has learned, from conversations with the guests on her How to Fail podcast, from stories shared with her by readers and listeners, and from her own life, and distils them into seven principles of failure. It was described as 'Witty and likeable … thoughtful and probing' by the Guardian. [25]

Day's next novel Magpie is set be released in September 2021.

Day is co-founder of the cultural organisation Pin Drop Studio, which holds regular literature salons in London and other major cities, as well as the annual Pin Drop Short Story Award in collaboration with arts institution the Royal Academy of Arts.[9]

Day married journalist Kamal Ahmed, the Business Editor of BBC News, in December 2011.[3][26] The couple separated in February 2015, and are now divorced.[23][27] Day is now in a relationship with Justin Basini, the CEO and co-founder of ClearScore.[28]

Fiction

• Scissors Paper Stone (2012)
• Home Fires (2013)
• Paradise City (2015)
• The Party (2017)

Non-fiction

• How to Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong (2019)
• Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong (2020)

• Elizabeth Day's Official website
• Elizabeth Day's contributor page, Guardian/Observer website