凯特·莫斯

Katherine Louise Mosse (born 1961) is a British novelist, non-fiction and short story writer and broadcaster. She is best known for her 2005 novel Labyrinth, which has been translated into more than 37 languages. She co-founded in 1996 the annual award for best UK-published English-language novel by a woman that is now known as the Women's Prize for Fiction, and since 2024 has a sister award, The Women's Prize for Nonfiction.

Early life and career

Mosse was born in Chichester, and raised in Fishbourne, West Sussex, the eldest of three sisters born to a solicitor, Richard (1920–2011) and Barbara (1931–). Mosse's aunt was involved in the campaign for the ordination of women and her grandfather was a vicar. She was educated at Chichester High School for Girls and New College, Oxford, from where she graduated in 1984 with a BA (Hons) in English. After leaving university, she spent seven years working in publishing in London for Hodder & Stoughton, then Century, and finally as an editorial director at Hutchinson, part of the Random House group. She was a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Women in Publishing.

She left publishing in 1992, for a writing career beginning with the non-fiction, Becoming a Mother.

Career

Early writing and the Languedoc Trilogy

Although best known for her adventure and ghost fiction, inspired by real history, Mosse's first two works were non-fiction. Becoming A Mother (in its seventh edition) was published by Virago in 1993, followed in 1995 by The House: Behind the Scenes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, published by BBC Books to accompany the BBC2 series, The House. She then wrote two contemporary novels. Eskimo Kissing, about a young, adopted woman searching for her background, was well received when it was published in 1996. This was followed in 1998 by the biotech thriller, Crucifix Lane.

The first of the Languedoc Trilogy, Labyrinth, appeared in 2005. A number one bestseller internationally, it has sold millions of copies and was the bestselling title in the UK for 2006. It also won the Richard & Judy Best Book at the British Book Awards 2006 and was named as one of Waterstones Top 25 books of the past 25 years. A Labyrinth miniseries was broadcast in 2013.

In October 2007, the second novel in the trilogy, Sepulchre, was published. A tale of haunting and Tarot set in fin-de-siècle and 20th-century France, it was also a number one bestseller in the UK and an international bestseller. While Mosse was researching the third and final novel in the trilogy, she released her novel The Winter Ghosts in 2009, based on a novella she previously contributed to the Quick Reads Initiative. Film rights have been sold to Ruby Films. Citadel, the third novel in the trilogy, came out in 2012 and was also an international bestseller. Inspired by the real history of the resistance in Carcassonne during World War II, it tells the story of an imagined all-female resistance unit.

In October 2013, Mosse's collection of short stories, The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales, was published – a collection of ghost stories inspired by traditional folk tales and country legends from England and France, throughout Sussex, Brittany and the Languedoc.

In September 2014, Mosse published her gothic thriller The Taxidermist's Daughter, set in 1912 in Fishbourne and Chichester.

In June 2019, Mosse released The Burning Chambers, the first of a series of novels, beginning in the French Wars of Religion, spanning 300 years from 1562 in Carcassonne, via Amsterdam to 1862 in Franschhoek, Western Cape, South Africa. The second in the series, The City of Tears, was published in 2020.

Other writing and plays

Mosse has also contributed a number of essays and stories to anthologies and collections, including Modern Delight (a book inspired by J. B. Priestley's 1949 book Delight) published by Waterstone's to raise money for Dyslexia Action and the London Library; Little Black Dress (edited by Susie Maguire); Midsummer Nights (edited by Jeanette Winterson), a collection to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Glyndebourne opera house in East Sussex; The Best Little Book Club in Town and The Coffee Shop Book Club in aid of Breast Cancer Care and Why Willows Weep (edited by Tracy Chevalier) in aid of the Woodland Trust (2011), Write (Guardian Books), Virago at 40 (edited by Lennie Goodings), Fifty Shades of Feminism (edited by Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach), Writing Historical Fiction (edited by Celia Brayfield and Duncan Sprott) and Anthology of World War I Literature for Children (edited by Michael Morpurgo) in 2014, in aid of the Royal British Legion and SSAFA.

Mosse has also written introductions to reissues of a number of works of fiction and non-fiction including Writers' & Artists Yearbook 2009, Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Goldfinger by Ian Fleming, Night Falls on the City by Sarah Gainham, A Chichester Miscellany by Phil Hewitt, Chichester Harbour: England's Coastal Gem by Liz Sagues, One Hundred Great Plays by Women by Lucy Kerbel.

In 2012, she published an anniversary book to celebrate 50 years of the Chichester Festival Theatre. Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty is published by the crowd-funding publishing company Unbound.

Her first play, Syrinx, was part of the SkyArts Theatre Live project, devised by Sandi Toksvig. First performed in July 2009, it won a broadcasting press publicity award that same year. Mosse's second play Endpapers was part of the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books. Her monologue was inspired by the Book of Revelation, the final book in the Bible.

In September 2020, Mosse's own adaptation of her 2014 gothic thriller The Taxidermist's Daughter, set in 1912 in Fishbourne and Chichester, will première at Chichester Festival Theatre.