Kate Murray-Browne was born in London and worked in publishing for ten years before becoming a writer. Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Upstairs Room, was published in 2017 and selected as a Book of the Year in The Times. Her second novel, One Girl Began, is set over 111 years in Hackney and tells the story of three women separated by history but connected by the same building: a box factory in the Edwardian era, a derelict squat in the 1980s and luxury flats by 2020. It was described by the Hackney Citizen as 'a feminist history of the borough in fictional form'. Kate lives in Hackney with her family.