Alice McVeigh

Alice McVeigh was born in South Korea, of American diplomatic parents, and lived in Asia until she was 13, when the family returned to Washington D.C. She then fell in love with the cello, winning the Beethoven Society of Washington cello competition, and reaching the finals of the National Music Teachers Association Young Soloists national competition. After achieving a B.Mus. with distinction at the internationally acclaimed Jacobs School of Music, she came to London to study with Jacqueline du Pré and William Pleeth. After that she performed for two decades with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique all over Europe, America and Asia.

Her first two contemporary novels – While the Music Lasts and Ghost Music – were published by Orion Publishing/Hachette in the late 90s, and her first play (Beating Time) put on at the Lewisham Theatre. (The film rights to her first book were also sold, to Channel 4, but Mozart in the Jungle got there first!)  McVeigh's speculative thriller, Last Star Standing, was published by Unbound Publishing under her pen name, Spaulding Taylor, in 2021. It won a Kirkus star and was runner-up in the Independent Press Awards in the Action/Adventure category. It was also a finalist in CIBA’s Cygnus Award, the Wishing Shelf Book Awards (in adult fiction) the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (in science fiction), in the International Book Awards, The New York City Book Awards and several others.

In June 2021, Warleigh Hall Press published the first in her series of six Jane Austenesque novels (Susan: A Jane Austen Prequel). An imagining of Lady Susan as a sixteen-year-old, Susan was a quarter-finalist in Publishers Weekly’s 2021 BookLife Prize, won First Place (historical) in the Pencraft, Global, eLit, and Incipere Book Awards, was a finalist in seven competitions including Chanticleer's Goethe Award, and was selected as one of Shelf Unbound magazine’s “100 notable Indies” of 2021. 

Warleigh Hall Press in 2022 published Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation), Honorable Mention in the prestigious Foreword Indies' "Book of the Year" 2022, Editor’s Pick (“outstanding”) on Publishers Weekly, Gold medallist in the Historical Fiction Company's annual awards (2023), also in the Pencraft and Global. Bronze medal in the IPPY's (2022) in European Fiction.  

The third and most recent release in what Publishers Weekly in 2023 described as "McVeigh's celebrated Austenesque series" is Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation. Again starred by Publishers Weekly, the new Darcy has also won gold in the Pencraft and fourth in the Readers Favorite Book Awards. It is a current semi-finalist for Chanticleer's Chatelaine Book Award. Shelf Magazine listed it in the last ten for its "Book of the Year, 2023".

Alice is married to Professor Simon McVeigh, and lives in London. They share one daughter, who has a Presidential Scholarship at Harvard in Chinese Literature (Ph.D), a passion for tennis and chamber music, and a second home in Crete.