Jean Findlay was born in Edinburgh and studied law and French at Edinburgh University, then theater in Krakow with Tadeusz Kantor. She ran a theater company, writing and producing plays in Berlin, Bonn, Dublin, Rotterdam, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She has written for The Scotsman, The Independent, The Guardian, and Time Out, and she lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children. She is the great-great-niece of C. K. Scott Moncrieff.