Marian Exall Biography
Born in England and raised across Europe, Exall practiced employment law in Atlanta before moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2006, where she abandoned the courtroom for the writing desk. Her Sarah McKinney mystery series has earned two CIBA Clue Awards, and her latest mystery, Loners, follows a Pacific Northwest detective charged with solving the mystery in which the victim is a doppelgänger for the detective herself. In 2024, she also published Daughters of Riga, a historical novel inspired by a Dutch diplomat who saved Jewish refugees during World War II—a book that won the Hemingway Award for 20th century wartime fiction. Beyond novels, her short stories, poetry, and memoir have appeared in numerous anthologies, including her award-winning travel memoir, An Azure Year, which took the 2017 Solas Award. Her work moves between mystery, historical fiction, and personal narrative with equal ease.
