Ruth Figgest

Ruth Figgest is a novelist and short story writer from Oxford. She is best known for Magnetism (2018). Her stories gained second place at the Bridport Prize in 2012.

Ruth Figgest was born in Oxford and grew up in the United States. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Sussex. She worked as a clinical audiologist and a senior manager in the NHS. She later became Chief Executive of a charity running a community centre in East Sussex.

Her story, The Coffin Gat, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013. Her stories were shortlisted six times for the Bridport Prize. Another story was shortlisted for the Mslexia short story competition.

Magnetism (2018) is set in the American Midwest and Southwest. It opens in 1976 with Erica, a teenager, in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt. In the present day, Erica, now in her fifties, learns her mother has died. From there, the narrative moves backwards, with chapters casting light that informs later scenes. It tracks a mother-daughter bond that alternates between cooperation and opposition. Their exchanges carry intensity and an emotional force.

Ruth Figgest lives in Eastbourne and teaches on the two-year Creative Writing Programme at Towner.

She advises writers, “Novels need to be complex, but not necessarily complicated”. She also tells students, “Perfectionism can be paralysing”.

Photo credit: X @RuthFiggest