Multi-award winning, Sunday Times bestselling author M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle. He joined the army at sixteen, leaving ten years later to complete a degree in social work. Seventeen years after taking up a probation officer role in Cumbria, at the rank of assistant chief officer, he became a full-time author.

The Puppet Show, the first book in his Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw series, was published by Little, Brown in 2018 and went on to win the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger. Black Summer, the second in the series, was longlisted for the Gold Dagger as was book three, The Curator. Dead Ground won the CWA Steel Dagger in 2022 and The Botanist won the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year in 2023. The series has now been translated into twenty-seven languages. Fearless, the first thriller in the new US-set, Ben Koenig series, was published by Flatiron Books in the US and by Little, Brown in the UK in 2023. It was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and will soon be a major TV series. The Mercy Chair, published in June 2024, is the sixth in the Washington Poe series.
 
M. W. Craven lives in Carlisle with his wife, Joanne and when he isn't talking nonsense in the pub, he can usually be found at punk gigs and writing festivals up and down the country.