The Heart of My Words
My Journey and Creative Sparks
Nine years of cataloging hospital and asylum records taught me more about writing than any workshop has: that a life can be summed up in a box correctly ticked, and that the summing up is where the story hides.
What follows is the long version — the milestones, the abandoned manuscripts, and the second drafts where each of these books actually began.
Started in
1986
Awards and recognitions
Awards, Recognitions, and Achievements
The Ashfell Cycle took the Harrowgate Prize in its first year and the Reader's Choice twice since. Winter Garden was longlisted where nobody expected it to be, carried there almost entirely by reading groups. Each of these is a marker on a road that a great many other people helped build.
