Stef Penney is a Scottish filmmaker, screenwriter, and author, who was born in the Scottish capital and grew up in London, England. After completing her degree in Philosophy and Theology from Bristol University, Penney turned to film-making and made three short films before studying Film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art. She was then selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme and has since written and directed two short films.\n Penney gained significant recognition in the literary world with her debut novel, The Tenderness of Wolves, which won the 2006 Costa Book Awards. The novel is set in Canada in the 1860s, and Penney researched it entirely in the libraries of London, as she suffered from agoraphobia at the time and never visited Canada. The Tenderness of Wolves has been translated into thirty languages and has been a significant success for Penney.
Penney is a screenwriter and the author of three novels, with her other works being The Invisible Ones (2011) and Under a Pole Star (2016). She has also written extensively for radio, including adaptations of Moby Dick, The Worst Journey in the World, and a third installment of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise series. Penney has a love for cold landscapes and is drawn to what scares her, including treeless wilderness, the open sea, and space.\n Penney has a deep connection to Scotland, having grown up there, and has a love-hate relationship with her home country. She has a degree in Philosophy and Theology, which she jokes made her unemployable, and has been a feminist for as long as she can remember. Writing about a female explorer at the end of the 19th Century, Penney felt it was a political and narrative necessity to tell the truth about sex scenes in books and films, which she feels have been misleading in the past.