Lisa Appignanesi was born in Poland and grew up in France and Canada. A prize-winning writer and novelist, she was chair of the Freud Museum from 2008-2014, chair of the Royal Society of Literature from 2016-2021 and is a former president of English PEN. She was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2013. Her non-fiction includes Freud's Women (with John Forrester), Mad, Bad and Sad, All About Love, Trials of Passion, and the memoirs Losing the Dead and Everyday Madness.