[4] After graduating from King's College, Cambridge, Mozley lived in Honor Oak and briefly taught English in Buenos Aires before moving back to York in 2013 for her Master of Arts (MA).
"[7] When asked at an earlier interview about writers and works she particularly enjoyed, she mentioned some by Cormac McCarthy and Ursula K. Le Guin, and by Philip Pullman, whom she had loved as a child.
In the novel, Mozley "wanted to capture the ambiguity of local historical recollections; to say something about their double-edged thrall; to examine the desire to live in the past and the need to extricate oneself from it.
"[8][5][9][10] The novel Elmet is concerned strongly with the idea of home, "the building of a house, the preparation of food; stolen glimpses of a woman's wardrobe.
"[11] This moves stealthily onto the fact that the 14-year-old narrator, Daniel, is not just domesticated, but must come to terms with being gay, or even transgender, while his older sister Cathy is a tomboy "raised in isolation by a man poorly suited to the job, and taught skills typically taken up by boys.