Louisa Young was a journalist for some years. Her first book was A Great Task of Happiness (1995), the life of Kathleen Bruce, her grandmother, the sculptor and wife of Scott of the Antarctic. She followed that with her Egyptian trilogy of novels: Baby Love (which was listed for the Orange Prize), Desiring Cairo and Tree of Pearls. They were followed by The Book of the Heart, a cultural history of our most symbolic organ. The first volume of her children's trilogy, Lionboy, written with her ten-year-old daughter under the pseudonym Zizou Corder, is coming out in October 2003. It is to be published in 25 languages, and the film rights have been sold to Dreamworks.
She lives in London with her daughter.