Novel Ideas

Lucy Atkins is an award-winning author and journalist. She is a book critic for the Sunday Times and the Guardian, teaches on Oxford University’s Creative Writing Master’s degree and has judged the Costa Book Awards. Her novels have sold 360,000 copies across all formats and her third, The Night Visitor , has been optioned for television. Her most recent novel, Magpie Lane , was chosen as a book of the year by BBC Radio 4’s Open Book, the Guardian, the Telegraph and Good Housekeeping magazine.

Freya North is the author of 14 bestselling novels including her highly acclaimed debut Sally (1996), Pillow Talk (2008 – winner of the RNA award) and The Turning Point (2016). A sense of place is central to her writing and previous novels have featured Derbyshire, Teesside, North Norfolk, the Scottish Highlands, Vermont and British Columbia. A passionate reader since childhood, Freya founded and ran the Hertford Children’s Book Festival, has judged the Costa Book Awards and is a patron of the Society of Women Writers & Journalists. She is also an Ambassador for Bowel Cancer UK and patron of Pointers In Need. In her spare time, she enjoys ceramics, riding her horses and cycling long distance. She lives on a small farm in Hertfordshire with her dogs, horses and sheep. www.freyanorth.com.

Freya North and Lucy Atkins are the hosts of Wednesday Writers, a weekly Instagram live in which they discuss writing with a host of bestselling authors.