Naomi, what were you doing before coming to UEA?
I was living in New York, working as a marketing manager for an international law firm.

How come you were there?
Hmm... Largely because - if this isn't too obvious an answer - I was looking for something useful, money-earning and intellectually stimulating to do after university. I knew I wanted to write (I'd written one practice novel when I was an undergraduate) but I had no idea how to begin to make money at it, or even if I was good enough to give it a try. Having shown my novel to a few friends at university and received a lot of "thumbs down" responses, I was a bit discouraged. I could see quite clearly that journalism wasn't for me - I'd worry too much about offending or upsetting people - and this seemed like a way to work with words. It wasn't my great passion, but there's always something satisfying about doing a professional job for an organization with high standards.

Had you always wanted to be a writer?
I suppose yes? When I was seven years old I wanted to be a librarian, but I think that was just so I could spend time with all those books. Definitely by the time I was eleven or twelve I was writing for my own pleasure. I first tried writing a novel when I was fifteen - I got halfway through chapter 2 before I gave up, but it was a start.

What made you choose to come to UEA?
I heard an interview with Rose Tremain on Radio 4 when I was doing my undergraduate degree. It was the first time I'd ever heard of such a thing as an academic programme in creative writing, and it sounded like just exactly what I wanted to do. I remember listening to her and thinking "one day, I'm going to go and do that course". By the time I actually applied there were other creative writing courses around too, but the UEA course was the one I'd always intended to do, even before I knew about its incredible reputation.

Who taught you while you were here?
Patricia Duncker, Richard Holmes, Paul Magrs and Colin Teevan.

Can you describe how the teaching was structured - did it work for you?
On the creative writing side, most of the teaching took the form of workshops. Each week, four people in the group sent round 5,000 words of their work-in-progress, we all read it, critiqued it, and then shared our thoughts in the workshop setting. I think I was in the very last group to send work out because I was so nervous about it - and I had nightmares the night before my first workshop! But, the level of advice and support I got from those workshops was amazing. And just getting the views of that number of people was incredibly helpful. It makes working on my new book feel very lonely by comparison.

Were you already working on Disobedience?
No, I started it when I arrived because I thought I "ought" to be working on a novel. But it grew from a short story I'd already written (in fact, the one I'd submitted with my application to the MA). It then took me two and a half years to complete.

How would you describe your experience of being on the MA?
It was life-changing. I don't say that lightly. I arrived feeling battered, bemused, creatively exhausted and fearful that I could never "be a real writer". I didn't even think I'd enjoy writing full-time. I left with a sense of confidence in my own ability: not that I have some magical "talent" that works effortlessly, but that I knew that, with a good deal of work, I could take a piece of writing and make it better, make it something people might want to read. When I left, I felt that I might, just possibly, be publishable one day. In addition, I made some wonderful friends. It was a really healing year, for me, although I'm aware that not everyone had that experience.

What happened after you'd completed your MA?
I went to work part-time in marketing for a children's charity while I finished the book. There was a bit of a slump, I remember: three or four months when I couldn't make myself write at all, away from the support and encouragement of the course. But I picked myself up and pushed on.

Disobedience has been incredibly – and deservedly – successful. How have you found the experience of being published and reviewed and so on, all that public side of being a writer?
It's been a mixed bag. The day I heard my book was going to be published was literally the happiest day of my life. That news felt too big to contain, it was shining and golden and incomprehensible. It was like finding out that the person you're in love with loves you too - except better. But as a friend said to me recently: all success is demystification. It's quite sad peeking behind the veil of publishing to see how the business works. Not that it works in a horrendous way - it seems a pretty honest world with people who care a lot about literature but... there is that clichéd loss of innocence. Receiving my first horrible review was quite shattering (although I'm a bit more thick-skinned now, I think). I'm sad that I can't walk into a bookshop now and see it as a garden of delight and wonder; instead it's all sums of money and assessment of careers. Just as I imagined when I was seven, I find solace in libraries now, where books are still important because of the ideas in them, and not just as units sold.

What are you working on now?
A New Book. It has Oxford in it. That's about all that seems to be fixed for the moment.

This interview was conducted in September 2007.