Elected: 2025
Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief, The Western Wind and Orbital. She is also the author of a memoir, The Shapeless Unease.
Her latest novel, Orbital, takes place on a space station and is an account of a single 24-hour day in low earth orbit. Orbital won the Booker Prize 2024 and the Hawthornden Prize and is nominated for the Orwell Prize and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.
She is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in the UK.
Fellows are nominated by peers and elected by our Council of writers – our governing Board. Being elected a Fellow of the RSL is a lifetime honour. This role gives them the opportunity to support other writers, readers and the future of literature. The RSL connects writers in the Fellowship to one another, and to a wider readership.
