Gail Honeyman (born 1972[1]) is a Scottish writer[2] whose debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, won the 2017 Costa First Novel Award.

[3] Born and raised in Stirling in central Scotland[3] to a mother who worked as a civil servant and a father in science,[4] Honeyman was a voracious reader in her childhood, visiting the library "a ridiculous number of times a week".

However, she decided that an academic career was not for her and started a string of "backroom jobs", first as a civil servant in economic development and then as an administrator at the University of Glasgow.

[6] While working as an administrator, Honeyman enrolled in a Faber Academy writing course,[5] submitting the first three chapters of what would become Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine to a competition for unpublished fiction by female writers, run by Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

[3] Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine won the 2017 Costa First Novel Award, and since then Honeyman has been interviewed often, including by The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and Waterstones.