Jenny Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family.
She left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist's assistant (she was The Lovely Tanya), she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history, at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.
She stayed in Oxford working as a recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that she met and married her husband, Vic.
In 2001 they retired and moved to Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dog and cat. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, knitting and attempting to do fiendishly difficult logic puzzles.
She has written two novels - Domingo's Angel - a love story set in Franco's Spain and harking back to the Spanish Civil War and beyond - and All in the Mind - a contemporary novel about an old woman who mysteriously begins to get younger
She has also written an anthology of short stories - Take One At Bedtime - and co-written the anthology Bedtime Shadows - with the inimitable Tara Fox Hall.
She has contributed short stories to many other anthologies, of which two - Doppelganger and Uncle Vernon have recently been released as short ebooks.
Her first self-published ebook, Away With the Fairies, was released in September 2012. Her second,
Mantequero, was released in June 2013 and the long-awaited sequel, Disappeared, was released in January 2014. Take One at Bedtime was republished independently in May 2014 and Domingo's Angel in July 2014. Sins of the Father, the third in the Mantequero series was released in August 2014 and Tales of the Mantequero, a compilation of all three Mantequero stories plus a further two, was released on 3 October 2014, and An Open Letter to Stephen King & Other Essays, a compilation of non-fiction essays and articles on 14 December 2014.