William Fiennes is the bestselling author of The Snow Geese and The Music Room.

He has contributed reviews, essays and stories to many publications, including the London Review of Books, Granta, the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement.

The Snow Geese, published to wide acclaim in 2002, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. William Fiennes was the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 2003.

On publication in 2009, The Music Room was called “a small masterpiece” (Sunday Telegraph), “a brilliant work” (Irish Times), “completely uplifting” (Metro) and “a beautiful and fortifying book, even a great one” (Daily Telegraph).

William Fiennes is co-founder of the charity First Story, which supports creativity and literacy in schools serving low-income communities across England, and which currently runs writer-in-residence programmes in 70 schools. He is founder of the UK's National Writing Day, an annual campaign to promote and celebrate writing in schools and communities.

He is an Honorary Vice-President of Epilepsy Action and an Ambassador for The Woodland Trust.

William Fiennes was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.