Wendy Perriam is an English novelist and graduate of St Anne's College, Oxford who started writing at the age of five and wrote her first novel at eleven. Perriam then went silent as she struggled through a long period of depression, having been expelled from her Catholic school for heresy and told she was in Satan's power. Many of her early novels explore the abuses and, conversely, the great attractions of Catholicism. Perriam's work is also renowned for its explicit sexual content. In 2002, she won the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award for Tread softly. Perriam has appeared frequently on television and radio, and was once a regular contributor to the radio series Stop the Week and Fourth Column. Her work has been critically acclaimed for its psychological insight and for its power to disturb as well as divert. Described by the Sunday Telegraph as "one of the most interesting unsung novelists of her generation", Perriam published her 23rd work, 'I'm on the train!', a short-story collection, in April, 2012. Her 16th novel, Broken Places, published in paperback in 2012, was shortlisted for 2011 'Mind Book of the Year' award.