The daughter of a U.S. diplomat, Alice McVeigh was born in Seoul, South Korea, and spent her entire childhood living in South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and Myanmar. Returning to McLean VA as a teenager, she fell with an audible thud for the cello, taking a cello performance degree at the internationally renowned Jacobs School of Music. After graduating, she came to London to study for a year with William Pleeth, the teacher of Jacqueline du Pré. Instead, after marrying a British musicologist, Professor Simon McVeigh, Alice has lived in London ever since, performing in British orchestras all over the world, most notably the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique, and the Royal Philharmonic. She took British nationality in 2000.
Alice had always written fiction as a hobby. She sold her first full-length novels, While the Music Lasts and Ghost Music, to Orion/Hachette in the late 90s. Reviews were spectacular: “The orchestra becomes a universe in microcosm; all human life is here . . . McVeigh succeeds in harmonising a supremely comic tone with much darker notes.”(The Sunday Times) And: “McVeigh is a professional cellist and is thus able to describe with wry authority the extraordinary life of a London orchestra. This is a very enjoyable novel, and not quite as light as it pretends to be.” (The Sunday Telegraph).
However, infertility-induced depression meant that the third in the series was never finished, and Orion dumped her. On the bright side, Alice’s seventh IVF succeeded! She decided to stay at home with her baby, and to do developmental editing and ghostwriting in preference to orchestra work. However, after a while the itch to create returned… Her current Austen series of four books (a fifth is in progress) has won over fifty awards.
Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation (2023) was honoured in the last London Book Fair (the UK SelfiesBook Awards). It’s P&P from Darcy’s diaries – and also features an expanded role for Mary Bennet.
Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel (to Lady Susan, of course)was a 2021 quarterfinalist for ®Publishers Weekly’s famous BookLife Prize. It imagines Austen’s Lady Susan as a matchmaking sixteen-year-old, before being corrupted by the bright lights of London.
Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation, published in 2022, is Emma told from the points of view of a rather more clued-up Harriet Smith and the enigmatic and lovely Jane Fairfax. It was runner-up in General fiction for Foreword Indies’ prestigious “Book of the year Award” in 2022.
Pride and Perjury was published in May 2024, and is currently a finalist in Chanticleer Internationals Short Story Collection Book Award. All of Alice’s novels have been starred ‘Editor’s picks’ on Publishers Weekly. The Series won Chanticleer International Book Awards’ First Place (Series, historical) last Spring, and has just won the gold medal in the Global Book Awards (Series, all genres).
Alice can generally be found with a racquet in her hand, smiting tennis balls at the Bromley Tennis Centre. The McVeigh’s daughter, Rachel, is studying for a Ph.D in Chinese Literature at Harvard, carrying a Presidential Scholarship.
Alice’s website is www.alicemcveigh.com and she’s on social media here: https://www.linktr.ee/ASTMcVeigh
Jane Austen-Inspired Stories
Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel
Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation
Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation
Pride and Perjury: 12 short stories inspired by Pride and Prejudice
Contemporary Novels
While the Music Lasts
Ghost Music
Speculative Thrillers
Last Star Standing
Nonfiction
All Risks Musical: An Irreverent Guide to the Music Profession
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