Media bio:
Emma Rous is the USA Today bestselling author of The Au Pair and The Perfect Guests. She grew up in England, Indonesia, Kuwait, Portugal and Fiji, and from a young age she had two ambitions: to write stories, and to look after animals. She studied veterinary medicine and zoology at the University of Cambridge, then worked as a small animal veterinary surgeon for eighteen years before switching to full time writing. Emma lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband and three sons.
Personal bio:
I was born in England and spent most of my childhood in Indonesia, Kuwait, Portugal and Fiji, before returning to the UK as a teenager to finish my high school education in Colchester in Essex. I had always wanted to be a writer, but I was drawn to working with animals too, so I spent six years studying veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, picking up a zoology degree along the way and grabbing the chance to study orang utans in Borneo and ungulates (hoofed mammals) in South Africa. After graduating as a vet in 1997, I worked for the Cromwell Veterinary Group in Huntingdon for more than eighteen years before taking a career break in 2016 to try my hand at writing fiction.
In 2017, a literary agent named Rebecca Ritchie read the manuscript of my first novel and offered me representation. The Au Pair subsequently sold in eighteen territories, including to Little, Brown in the UK and Penguin Random House in the US. It has been optioned for TV too, but I don’t talk about that too much in case it doesn’t work out — these things can take years and there are no guarantees! My second book, The Perfect Guests, came out during the first year of the pandemic, and I’m currently working on my third novel.
I live on the edge of the fens in Cambridgeshire with my husband and our three sons, plus our rescue dog and cat. My writing desk is in the attic, which gives me views over trees and fields, and when I’m not writing I enjoy kayaking on our local river, open water swimming, and exploring the local countryside with my dog.