Lucy Ashe Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Lucy Ashe
Photo: Alex Fine

Lucy Ashe

Lucy Ashe Biography

Lucy Ashe is an English teacher at a school in London. After training at the Royal Ballet School, she decided to change career plans and go to university. She studied English literature at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, before receiving her teaching qualification. Ashe's poetry and short stories have been published in a number of literary journals, and she was shortlisted for the 2020 Impress Prize for New Writers.

Lucy Ashe's website

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Interview

Debut author Lucy Ashe talks about ballet - the inspiration behind her book, The Dance of the Dolls.

Tell us about the inspiration behind The Dance of the Dolls.

When I was training at the Royal Ballet School, I developed a fascination for not only the stories of ballets, but also the history of their creations. The Dance of the Dolls is a novel emerging out of years of research and personal experience and I sometimes feel as though I have pulled together the threads of what I love most in my life to create my debut novel.

My novel reimagines the early years of the Vic-Wells Ballet company at Sadler's Wells theatre, and the story is immersed in ballet history featuring famous historical figures such as Ninette de Valois, Lydia Lopokova, Constant Lambert, Alicia Markova, and Nicholas Sergeyev. I loved engaging with this important time period when British Ballet was starting to grow, integrating historical details into my fictional story.

How did your experience at the Royal Ballet School inform the research behind the novel?

My eight years first as a junior associate and then at White Lodge, the Royal Ballet's School in Richmond Park, had a huge influence on the novel. To spend those years living and breathing ballet, to define myself entirely as a ballet dancer, was both wonderful and challenging in equal measure. There ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Lucy Ashe at BookBrowse
The Dance of the Dolls jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Lucy Ashe but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Megan Abbott

    Megan Abbott

    Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of eleven crime novels, including You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Dance of the Dolls

    Try:
    The Turnout
    by Megan Abbott

  • Kate Atkinson

    Kate Atkinson

    Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her four bestselling novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie became the BBC television series ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Dance of the Dolls

    Try:
    Shrines of Gaiety
    by Kate Atkinson

We recommend 6 similar authors

View all 6 Read-Alikes

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