Scarlett Thomas is an internationally bestselling novelist, performer, and Honorary Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kent, known for combining big ideas, storytelling, and humour to explore creativity, resilience, leadership, and long-term performance.

She is the author of fourteen novels translated into twenty-six languages, including the global bestseller The End of Mr. Y and the recent Times #2 bestseller The Sleepwalkers. Her non-fiction includes Monkeys with Typewriters, a widely admired book on creativity and process. She has been described by the New York Times as a “peculiar gonzo genius”, while The Times has called her “wickedly funny”, and the Telegraph praised her for writing “smart, stylish thrillers that smuggle big ideas into gripping plotlines”.

Drawing on more than twenty-five years of professional writing, university teaching, performance, and elite amateur sport, Scarlett brings a rare, cross-disciplinary perspective to leaders, teams, and high-performing individuals. Her teaching and consultancy work spans inspiring keynote talks, executive coaching, and immersive weekend intensives, all focused on how curiosity, adaptability, and deliberate beginner-thinking and hero-mind can become powerful strategies for leadership, innovation, and sustainable success.

At the heart of her work is what she calls Beginner’s Mind strategy: a deliberately counter-intuitive approach to achievement that resists burnout, over-specialisation, and complacency. Rather than presenting creativity as a moment of inspiration, Scarlett reframes it as a long-term practice — one that thrives on experimentation, side-projects, and a willingness to look foolish. This approach is equally effective in the boardroom, the creative industries, and periods of personal or organisational change.

Her flagship talk, How to Be a Beginner, draws on stories from an unusually varied career: from international literary success to £60-a-night murder-mystery theatre gigs; from academia to stand-up comedy; from a council-estate childhood to becoming one of the UK’s top-ranked tennis players in her age group. These experiences become practical, memorable lessons about learning, decision-making, resilience, and staying mentally agile in fast-changing environments.

Alongside her speaking and coaching work, Scarlett runs highly selective weekend intensives for leaders, innovators, creatives, and advanced writers. Delivered in both London and the ancient cathedral city of Canterbury, these immersive programmes allow participants to go deeper - awakening their understanding of storytelling, risk, and attention, and learning how to create work (and lives) that genuinely engage others.

Scarlett also coaches and speaks about the ‘Dark Art of Storytelling’, focussing on the least understood but most powerful elements of storytelling, including 5-act structure, the dramatic hook, stakes, jeopardy, the ticking clock and relatability. These are arguably the most potent tools available to humans. If you can make someone care - you can do anything.

Scarlett is an experienced and engaging speaker who brings the stagecraft of a performer to conferences, leadership programmes, and retreats. As well as her writing and consultancy work, she is an actor and comedian, unafraid to regularly test her theories of audience engagement and storytelling in front of a live audience! Scarlett has delivered lectures, workshops, and talks for universities, festivals, and cultural institutions internationally, and is known for being smart, funny, provocative - and highly relatable.

Audiences and clients leave her work energised, reassured, and re-excited about learning, creativity, and taking intelligent risks - with practical tools they can use immediately, and a mindset that lasts far longer.