Some of Kate Atkinson’s books are part of a series of novels, starting with Case Histories, which feature the character of Jackson Brodie as a private investigator and former police inspector. Atkinson has criticised the media’s coverage of her work – when she won the Whitbread award, for example, it was the fact that she was a “single mother” who lived outside London that received the most attention.[6] In a 2018 interview she declared that she did not spend time in great literary parties or the London high life.[6]

In 2009, she donated the short story “Lucky We Live Now” to Oxfam’s Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Atkinson’s story was published in the Earth collection.

In March 2010, Atkinson appeared at the York Literature Festival, giving a world-premier reading from an early chapter from her novel Started Early, Took My Dog (2010), which is set mainly in the English city of Leeds.

Atkinson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to literature. November 2018 she was the guest on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs.