Amy Arnold lives in Cumbria. She has degrees in Music and Psychology, and studied postgraduate Neuropsychology at Birmingham University. She’s worked as a university lecturer, teacher and swede packer. Her debut novel, Slip of a Fish, won the 2018 Northern Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize. Her second novel, Lori and Joe, was published by Prototype in 2023 and shortlisted for both the Goldsmiths Prize and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction.






‘Disturbing and powerful, shot through with flashes of bare lyrical beauty.’ – Irish Times

‘Achingly tender as well as gut-plummetingly sad, this is a novel about death that is also full of life.’ – Antony Cummins, Daily Mail

Lori & Joe shows a writer, in this, her second novel, caught up wondrously once again in the creative project of reflecting consciousness in the very rhythm and language of her prose.’ – Kirsty Gunn

‘Written in prose of astonishing musicality and resonance, Lori & Joe captures precisely the ebb and flow of a woman’s thoughts as she walks the Cumbrian fells following her husband’s sudden death. At first a seemingly quiet and meditative novel, the story that unfolds is anything but quiet – an unforgettable and devastating portrait of regret, secrets and harm amid a landscape of haunting beauty.’ – Tom Lee, Goldsmiths Prize Judge