Sally O’Reilly is a writer based in Sheffield. Her latest novel Hagtale: A Macbeth Origin Story (Scribe, 2025) is a dark fairy tale which retells Shakespeare’s play Macbeth from the perspective of a feral witch and a fourteenth century monk who is attempting to find a document which records the Scottish king-line. It contrasts the story Shakespeare tells with the lost hag’s version, an oral history which has been forgotten. Hagtale has been shortlisted for the World of Books Sustainable Story Award, 2026.

Her historical novel  Dark Aemilia (Myriad Editions/Picador US), draws on the life of Aemilia Lanyer, one of the first women to be published professionally in England and possibly the Dark Lady who inspired Shakespeare’s later sonnets. Dark Aemilia was nominated for the Kirkus Reviews Fiction prize in the US and the Italian translation was  shortlisted  for the Premio Letteraria prize and was a Finalist for the  Premio Vino del Terriccio award.

 Sally is a Cosmopolitan new journalist of the year, and her short stories have been published in the UK, Australia and South Africa, and shortlisted for prizes including the Cosmopolitan and Ian St James award.

She has also worked as a creative writing lecturer for The Open University, Brunel University and the University of Portsmouth, and she has an MA (Distinction) and a PhD in Creative Writing, both from Brunel University.

She has just launched her new Substack How to Be a Happy Writer. This is a follow-up to her nonfiction guide How to be a Writer, published by Piatkus/Little, Brown.