After studying law at Oxford, she went on to spend eleven years as a criminal barrister, learning how extreme situations bring out the best (or worst) in human nature.
Wilkes now lives in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about Polar exploration. When she isn't writing or reading horror, she's usually to be found hanging upside-down (like a bat) from her aerial silks.
Her debut novel is All The White Spaces.
At Electric Lit Wilkes tagged eight "books which offered fresh perspectives on what it feels like to be human in an inhuman place," including:
Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregorRead about another entry on the list.
Lean Fall Stand opens with a detailed, stark description of three men—Luke, Doc, and Thomas—caught in a sudden, overwhelming, and very scary storm which cuts them off from their remote observation station on Antarctica’s windy and exposed peninsula. Exploring the fine line between heroism and hubris, the rest of the novel unpicks the implications of a single event spun out into tragedy, seen through Doc’s post-stroke rehabilitation. McGregor’s novel is a deeply intimate portrayal of courage and endurance, the loss of senses and the self.
--Marshal Zeringue
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