Our authors
This year's line-up reflects a range of themes that seem to matter most at the moment: our relationship with the natural world; wellbeing and a sense of belonging; and rural and Cornish identity in a time of change.
Dawn French
Dawn French's most recent book is her game-changing, Women’s Prize longlisted fourth novel, Because of You, which received an overwhelming response from readers and critics alike, who fell in love with this wise and heart-breaking book.
At the heart of Because of You are two very different families, whose lives are suddenly entwined when a baby goes missing. When, seventeen years later, long-held secrets are revealed, the power of mother-love is tested to its limits.
Dawn’s first three novels, A Tiny Bit Marvellous, Oh Dear Silvia and According to Yes are all Sunday Times bestsellers. Her number one bestselling memoir, Dear Fatty, was published to critical acclaim in 2008, and Me. You. A Diary, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller in 2018. She has appeared in some of this country’s most loved and cherished shows, including French and Saunders, The Vicar of Dibley, and Jam and Jerusalem.
Dawn French lives in Cornwall and has been the Chancellor of Falmouth University since 2015.
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Monique Roffey
Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Her latest novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch won the Costa Book of the Year and the Costa Novel Award 2020. It was also shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021, the Goldsmiths Prize 2020, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021. Monique Roffey is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and a tutor for the National Writers Centre.
Twitter: @moniqueroffey
Website: www.moniqueroffey.com
Philip Marsden
Philip Marsden is the author of a number of books of travel, history and fiction. The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven and the Age of Sail, tells the story of Britain’s colourful maritime past seen through the changing fortunes of the town of Falmouth. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and he lives in Cornwall with his family and is the Patron of the festival.
Twitter: @philip1marsden
Website: www.philipmarsden.co.uk/
Helen Lederer
Helen is a writer, actress, comedian and presenter who came to fame in the 80s in the BBC Comedy ‘Naked video’, and appeared on Saturday Night Live, The Young Ones, French and Saunders and Bottom. She’s best known as Catriona the dippy journalist in Absolutely Fabulous (though younger viewers will
know her as Rich Aunt Ruby in the Horrid Henry movie, or very possibly from Celebrity Big Brother where she almost appeared normal.) Her comedy novel ‘Losing it’ was nominated for the PG Wodehouse Comedy Literary award. Helen set up the Comedy Women in Print award because she wanted to shine a light on witty women writers.
Nina Stibbe
Nina Stibbe is the author of two works of non-fiction - Love, Nina and An Almost Perfect Christmas - and three novels: Man at the Helm, Paradise Lodge, and Reasons to be Cheerful, which won the Comedy Women in Print prize 2020. Love, Nina won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2014 National Book Awards and in 2016 was adapted by Nick Hornby into a BBC series starring Faye Marsay and Helena Bonham-Carter. She lives in Cornwall.
Twitter: @ninastibbe
Website: www.ninastibbe.com/
Lamorna Ash
Lamorna Ash’s first book, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’, shortlisted for the Wainwright Nature Prize 2020 and one of the Financial Times‘ Summer Books of 2020. She is a freelance writer for the Sunday Times, the TLS and the Guardian among others, and has written numerous plays that have toured Edinburgh, Oxford and London. She can gut most kinds of fish, quite slowly.
Twitter: @LamornaAsh
Mark Jenkin
Mark Jenkin is a filmmaker based in West Cornwall. He works exclusively with small gauge film, acting as cinematographer and editor, and often hand-processing his own footage. He won a BAFTA for his feature film BAIT which was released theatrically by the BFI in the UK and went on to become a significant breakout arthouse hit achieving critical and box office success.
His new feature, Film 4 backed ENYS MEN, is a supernatural horror film set on an island off the Cornish coast and is due for release in late summer 2022.
Twitter: @Mark_Jenkin
Website: www.markjenkin.co.uk/
Anita Sethi
Anita Sethi was born in Manchester and is the author of the acclaimed debut, I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain which was described as "a memoir of rare power" by the Guardian and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing.
Anita has written for the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Vogue and BBC Wildlife, and appeared on various BBC radio programmes. Twitter: @anitasethi @ibelong_here. Website: www.anitasethi.com / www.i-belong-here.com
Max Porter
Max Porter’s first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers won many prizes including the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Europese Literatuurprijs. The theatrical adaptation, directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy, was staged in 2019. His follow-up Lanny was a Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. In January 2021 he published The Death of Francis Bacon, a short book on the celebrated and notorious painter.
Twitter: @maxjohnporter
Website: www.maxporter.co.uk/
Luke Wright
Luke Wright is a spit and sawdust wordsmith. His poems document 21st century British life with wit, humanity, and panache. He performs his work with snarl and spit and he’s toured his wares around the world for 20 years.
Luke is a Fringe First winner for new writing, and a winner of The Stage award for acting. He will be reading from his new collection - The Feel-Good Movie of the Year - and performing his new show, The Ballad Seller.
Twitter: @lukewrightpoet
Website: www.lukewright.co.uk/
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Wyl Menmuir
Wyl Menmuir is a novelist, editor and teacher of creative writing based in Cornwall. He is the author of two novels, the Man-Booker nominated and Observer Best Fiction of the year pick,The Many, and this year's Fox Fires.
Wyl's short fiction has appeared in Best British Short Stories and he has been published by Nightjar Press, Kneehigh Theatre and the National Trust. He is currently working on his first full-length non-fiction book inspired by his relationship with the water.
Twitter: @Wylmenmuir
Website: www.wylmenmuir.co.uk/
Raynor Winn
Raynor Winn's first book, The Salt Path, was a memoir about homelessness, nature and belonging. A Sunday Times bestseller for 80 weeks, it was shortlisted for the 2018 Costa Biography Award and the 2018 Wainwright Prize, and won the inaugural RSL Christopher Bland Prize. Her follow-up, The Wild Silence, explores her life after homelessness, when an old Cornish farm provides some hope of reconnecting with the natural world.
Twitter: @raynor_winn
Website: www.penguin.co.uk/
Megan Chapman
Megan Chapman AKA MCMC Spoken is a lyrical rhyming wizard. Her unique rhythmic style, and cutting content offers a mesmerising performance. One of her most recent sets post lockdown, July 2021, was in support of the well-known international musician Dizraeli.
She performs throughout Cornwall in venues such as The Eden Project. She has headlined literature festivals and performed in cities across the UK and internationally and at festivals including Glastonbury, Port Eliot and Womad. Her work as been commissioned by clients including the BBC and most recently, the NHS.
“Megan Chapman’s poetry is heartfelt and rhythmic. Playful and political, her Art is in the right place.”
Anna Murphy, Kneehigh
Gavin Knight
Gavin Knight is the author of two acclaimed non-fiction books: The Swordfish & The Star about the life of Cornish fishermen was voted Book of the Year by the FT & Esquire. His first book, Hood Rat about gang crime in Britain was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and CWA Non-fiction Dagger Award. Gavin has written for the Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Sunday Times and many others. He lives in Cornwall with his family.
Cathy Rentzenbrink
Cathy Rentzenbrink is an acclaimed memoirist whose books include The Last Act of Love and Dear Reader. In 2021 she published her first novel Everyone is Still Alive and she has a book about how to write a memoir coming in January 2022 called Write It All Down. Cathy regularly chairs literary events, interviews authors, reviews books, runs creative writing courses and speaks and writes on life, death, love, and literature.
Twitter: @CatRentzenbrink
Website: www.cathyreadsbooks.com/
Rebecca Cobb
Rebecca Cobb grew up surrounded by coloured pencils, felt pens, wax crayons, poster paints and pieces of paper. She studied illustration at Falmouth College of Arts and has been living in Falmouth ever since. As well as illustrating her own picture books she has also illustrated works by authors including Helen Dunmore and Julia Donaldson. In 2013, Rebecca won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for Picture Books, and she has been shortlisted for the prestigious CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal three times.
Twitter: @rebecca_cobb
Website: www.rebeccacobb.co.uk/
Craig Barr Green
Craig Barr-Green is the author of two award-winning children’s books set in Cornwall, Captured! and A Christmas in Cornwall, plus one non fiction book for Puffin, The Extraordinary Life of Steve Jobs.
Craig’s debut play, The One Memory of Flora Banks, co-written with Emily Barr, was commissioned by the Hall for Cornwall Youth Theatre. He lectures, mentors and teaches writing for children and regularly runs workshops for all ages.
Website: www.craigbarrgreen.com
Tim Hannigan
Tim Hannigan was born in Penzance and lives in West Penwith. He is a travel writer who writes mainly about Southeast Asia. In his latest book, The Travel Writing Tribe, he hunts down its legendary practitioners, delving into the diaries of Wilfred Thesiger and Patrick Leigh Fermor, and gaining insights from Colin Thubron, Kapka Kassabova and William Dalrymple. But along the way he realises how much is at stake: can his own love of travel writing survive this journey?
Twitter: @Tim_Hannigan
Website: www.timhannigan.com/
Mary Morris
Mary Morris is Artistic Director of Arvon, the creative writing charity, and Director of Totleigh Barton, its Devon writing house.
Mary began her editorial career at Bloomsbury Publishing in 2003. She went on to manage the general list at Gerald Duckworth, publishing both fiction and non-fiction. She later moved to the British Museum Press, where she developed exhibition titles, and finally to Faber & Faber, where she worked as a fiction editor for four years before moving to Devon to work for Arvon at Totleigh Barton. She is a freelance reviewer for the TLS.
Catrina Davies
Catrina Davies was born in Snowdonia and grew up in West Penwith, Cornwall. Her memoir Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed is the story of a personal housing crisis and a country-wide one, grappling with class, economics, mental health and nature. It shows how housing can trap us or set us free, and what it means to feel at home. Catrina has worked as a DJ, gardener, circus cellist, cleaner, TEFL teacher, dog walker, flower-picker, builder and waitress.
Website: www.catrinadavies.co.uk/
Charlie Carroll
Charlie Carroll is the author of three non-fiction books: The Friendship Highway, No Fixed Abode and On the Edge and his debut novel, The Lip, was published in March 2021. He has twice won the K Blundell Trust Award for 'writers under 40 who aim to raise social awareness with their writing', and written for the likes of the Guardian and the Big Issue and been featured in the Telegraph, National Geographic, and Wanderlust. He lives in Cornwall.
Twitter: @CharlieCarroll1
Website: www.charliecarroll.co.uk
Mac Dunlop
Mac Dunlop is the co-editor of the new collection 26 Voices for Change, an anthology of Cornish writers in response to climate change.
He is the editor of The Poetry Point and works with a variety of poetry and creative writing organizations in Cornwall.
In 2017 he mentored younger poets in association with the Charles Causley Trust, and since 2010 has worked with the Kernow Education and Arts Partnership. His publications include Solarium, a collection written while Poet in Residence with the National Trust, and The Enigma Deviations published by the Poetry Point. Dunlop also works as a radio producer and composer, his work has featured on the BBC, Resonance FM, Source FM, and currently has several releases being distributed by Off Record.
Felicity Tattersall
Felicity is an author and illustrator living in Cornwall who draws inspiration from Cornish culture and heritage.
Her first picture book 'Cornish Mice and the Treasure Garden' was published by TorMark in 2021. She writes short stories, plays and children's books. Her freelance illustration clients include the National Trust, Bodmin Keep, Cornwall Museums Partnership and the Shipwreck Treasure Museum.