Claire Askew was born in 1986 and grew up in the rural Scottish Borders.

Her first novel, All The Hidden Truths, won the University of Cambridge's Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize as a work in progress in 2016.
Published by Hodder and Stoughton in 2018, it went on to be shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Debut Dagger and the CWA Gold Dagger, and it won the 2019 McIlvaney Prize for Scottish Crime Debut of the Year. What You Pay For, the second novel in the DI Helen Birch series, was also shortlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger.

Also a poet, Claire is the author of two full length collections, This changes things (2016) and How To Burn A Woman (2021), both published by Bloodaxe Books.
How To Burn A Woman was the 2021 Saltire Awards Scottish Poetry Book of the Year.

In 2020, John Murray published Claire's creative writing guide Novelista, which draws on over a decade of experience in teaching creative writing.

Claire holds a Scottish Masters degree in English Literature, a MSc in Creative Writing, and a PhD in Creative Writing, all from the University of Edinburgh.
She has been a Scottish Book Trust Reading Champion, a Jessie Kesson Fellow, and Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

She is represented by Charlotte Seymour at Johnson & Alcock.