Rachel Joyce (born 1962) is a British writer. She has written plays for BBC Radio 4, and jointly won the 2007 Tinniswood Award for her radio play To Be a Pilgrim.[1][2] Her debut novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, was on the longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize,[3] and in December 2012 she was awarded the "New Writer of the Year" award by the National Book Awards for this book.[4]
She had an earlier career as an actress,[5] and has said that between her first writing ambitions aged 14 and the writing of her first novel she was "a young woman, a mother, an actress, a writer of radio drama - not to mention a terrible waitress in a wine bar, a door-to-door sales girl for one morning, and an assistant in a souvenir shop".[6]
She is married to actor Paul Venables, and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and four children.
She is the sister of actress Emily Joyce.