Ben Rice is a British author born in Tiverton, Devon, in 1972. After attending Blundell's School, he studied English literature at the universities of Newcastle and Oxford before earning a Master of Arts in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. His debut novella, Pobby and Dingan (published in 2000), won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2001 and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, later being adapted into the film Opal Dream. The book earned high praise, with The New York Times Book Review calling it "enormously touching, imaginative and unexpected," and in 2003, Granta named him one of their twenty "Best of Young British Novelists." This recognition cemented his reputation as a rising literary talent. Today, Rice lives in Sydney, Australia, where he teaches English at Marcellin College Randwick.