Rod Cookson is a writer who lives in Oxford, England with his wife and children. He descends from music hall performers, dairy farmers, sea captains, teachers, insurance salesmen and radiographers.

His writing has won the Opening Lines Competition, received Top Picks for the Claymore Award (twice) and been shortlisted in the Retreat West First Chapter Competition (twice), the Creative Writing NZ Short Story Prize, the Adventures in Fiction New Voices Competition and the Words with JAM First Page Competition.

Rod's recreations are football, cheese in all its forms, the Beatles, cycling, tennis (real or otherwise), French wine, Italian food, the films of Ingmar Bergman and cats. His antipathies are motor cars, dishonesty in public life, talking in cinemas, the Daily Mail newspaper, craft beer and airports.

Favourite writers include JG Ballard, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edmund Crispin, MR James, Claire Keegan, Daphne du Maurier, Cormac McCarthy, Aaron Sorkin, Richard Stark, Rex Stout, Dylan Thomas and Olga Tokarczuk.