Louise Dean is a British novelist, author of four published works Becoming Strangers, This Human Season., The Idea of Love and The Old Romantic. Dean was the winner of the Betty Trask Prize in 2004, long listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book prize and IMAP, winner of Le Prince Maurice prize in 2006. Dean writes about difficult and less glamorous themes. Her first book, Becoming Strangers, dealt with the themes of ageing, pancreatic cancer and Alzheimers. Her second book, This Human Season, studied the Blanket or Dirty Protest in the H blocks in the lead up to the Hunger Strike in Northern Ireland in 1981 and the assassinations of prison warders. Her third book, The Idea of Love, released in 2008, discusses mental illness, the pharmaceutical business and the exploitation of Africa.