Susanna Bailey Books in Order

If you want the best first taste of her work: Snow Foal
If you want to read in publication order: Snow Foal → Otters' Moon → Raven Winter
If you prefer a summer, sea-swept story: Otters' Moon
If you want the darkest winter mood: Raven Winter

Susanna Bailey grew up in Northern England, close to long beaches and moorland, and that landscape still feels close to her books. She has said she had her nose in a book from the age of four. Books were entertainment, escape, and company, especially when she was a shy, uncertain child who sometimes felt less alone inside stories than out in the world.

Before she became a novelist, Bailey worked in social work. That earlier career seems central to what she writes. Spending time with children and families in difficult situations showed her how much stories can help when people are frightened, sad, or confused, and it gave her a grounded feel for the ways children protect themselves, test adults, and keep hoping anyway.

Nature came into the picture too.

Bailey has spoken about the healing power of wild, quiet, green places, and that idea runs through almost everything she writes. Wanting to explore those feelings on the page, she went to Bath Spa University to study creative writing. She completed both the BA in Creative Writing and the MA in Writing for Young People there, won the university's undergraduate prize for writing for young people in 2016, and graduated from the MA with distinction in 2017. She has also said that while she was studying, she drew real inspiration from her tutor David Almond.

Her breakthrough began as a student manuscript. That novel became Snow Foal, a middle grade story about eleven-year-old Addie, sent to a foster family on an Exmoor farm, who slowly changes through caring for a wild foal. Before publication, the manuscript was shortlisted for the Joan Aiken Future Classics Prize and received an honorary mention in the Bath Spa and United Agents prize. When the book reached readers, it later made the Blue Peter Best Story longlist and helped put Bailey on the map.

She followed it with Otters' Moon, set on a remote Scottish island, where Luke is angry at his broken family and finds a fragile friendship while trying to protect otter pups. Then came Raven Winter, where Billie, living through another painful family situation, nurses an injured raven and holds on to the hope of reconnecting with her dad. These are very different plots, but Bailey keeps returning to children who are lonely, wary, and tougher than they first appear.

That is really the heart of her work.

Readers who click with Bailey's books often respond to the same mix: strong settings, emotional honesty, and the sense that animals matter without ever turning the story into fantasy. In her fiction, a foal, an otter, or a raven can open a door, but the deeper story is about trust, grief, family rupture, and small acts of care. Even when the subject is hard, the books usually lean toward hope rather than neat happy endings. She has also said that reading still feeds her writing, and that walks in wild or ancient places can set her imagination going. That fits the novels. Exmoor, a Scottish island, and the Yorkshire Dales are not just backdrops in her work, they shape the mood and the choices her characters make.

Alongside writing, Bailey has also lectured in creative writing at Bath Spa University, and her career has balanced writing with teaching and freelance social work. She is based in England, and her fiction feels closely tied to that mix of care work, teaching, reading, and time spent noticing the natural world. It is serious about what children carry, but it never forgets to leave a little warmth in the frame.