Colwill Brown was born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a James A. Michener Center Fellowship, and an MA in English Literature from Boston College. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. For fifteen years, she's lived with ME/CFS, a debilitating neurological disease triggered by a virus that, due to systemic medical neglect, currently has no treatment. A proud Donny lass, she claims to have played bass guitar in (nearly) every rock venue on South Yorkshire's toilet circuit.
Blistering, brilliant, savage and smart. This is a superb debut and Colwill Brown is the real thing -- EIMEAR MCBRIDE, author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing With this debut, Colwill Brown announces herself as unforgettable... a wondrous, luminous novel -- NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars Colwill Brown is, simply, brilliant and original on every level... We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is astonishing, as hilarious and wrenching as life itself. -- ELIZABETH McCRACKEN, author of The Hero of This Book Tender and raucous, Shaz, Kel, and Rach’s friendship is brilliantly realized. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is a novel brimming with rough poetry, heart, and mischief -- FERDIA LENNON, author of Glorious Exploits A bold, rowdy, and compelling new voice in fiction -- NAOMI BOOTH, author of Animals at Night In propulsive, strikingly original prose, Colwill Brown conjures girlhood in all its glittering potential and brutality -- TYLER WETHERALL, author of Amphibian A big, brave, beautiful scream of a book. It is haunting and hilarious and heartbreaking, so tender, so raw, so deeply felt, so full of insight and sympathy and, above all else, so exquisitely written -- EDWARD CAREY, author of Edith Holler Colwill Brown is a tremendous writer -- tender and tough, compassionate and sharply funny. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is extraordinary -- I grew to love Rach, Kel and Shaz as if they were my own childhood friends. A blazingly brilliant novel by a writer who, luckily for us, is just getting started -- MOLLY ANTOPOL, author of The UnAmericans Colwill Brown's We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is a kinetic and incantatory portrait of the rough-and-tumble world of girlhood. I fell headlong for the tough, vulnerable, and whip-smart characters at the center of this spectacularly original debut -- LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of State of Paradise Following Kel, Shaz and Rach’s lives from childhood to adulthood is a bit like watching King Lear being acted out every day. The stakes are so high, the passions so deep, the triumphs so vivid but happily, in the face of many missed buses and betrayals, they have each other and another voddie and kebab. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is one of the most remarkable portraits I’ve ever read of friendship -- MARGOT LIVESEY, author of The Road from Belhaven