Our Authors
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Nadia El-Fassi
Nadia El-Fassi is a half-Moroccan, half-Australian author of spicy romance and fantasy. They have an addiction to iced coffee, period dramas, buying D&D dice and watching horror movies. They live in London with their husband and perfectly round cat. Best Hex Ever is Nadia’s debut novel.
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Lesley McDowell
Glasgow-based Lesley McDowell is the author of three novels, including her most recent, Clairmont. She works as an editorial consultant and was for many years a literary critic. Dr McDowell has won three Creative Scotland awards, and has a PhD on the work of James Joyce.
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Amita Murray
Amita Murray lives in London. Just to keep things interesting, she writes in two genres: Regency romance and contemporary mystery. Her Arya Winters mysteries are published by Agora and are under a TV option. Her mystery novel Thirteenth Night won the Exeter Novel Prize in 2022.
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Maggie O'Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell is the author of Hamnet, Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include After You’d Gone, My Lover’s Lover, The Distance Between Us, The Hand That First Held Mine and The Marriage Portrait, as well as two books for children. She lives in Edinburgh.
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Sara Sheridan
Sara Sheridan is a writer and activist who has written more than 20 books. Truth or Dare, her first novel won the Scottish Library Award and was shortlisted for the Saltire. On Starlit Seas, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Prize. In 2022, The Fair Botanists was Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year and was also a season 7 pick for The Queen’s Reading Room.
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Heidi Swain
Heidi Swain is a Sunday Times Top Ten best-selling author who writes feel-good fiction for Simon & Schuster. She releases two books a year and the stories all have a strong sense of community, family and friendship. Heidi lives in beautiful west Norfolk. She is passionate about gardening, the countryside, collecting vintage paraphernalia and reading.
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Lucy Jane Wood
Lucy Jane Wood is an online content creator, avid reader and cosiness-seeker from the Wirral. These days, you’ll find her living in London, giant coffee in hand, and being headbutted at any given time by her cat. Rewitched is her debut novel.
Meet our Chairs
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Jenny Brown OBE
Jenny Brown will be chairing our inspiration voices event with Maggie O'Farrell.
She is one of Scotland’s leading literary agents and recently received an OBE for services to literature in the King's Birthday Honours List. She was previously Head of Literature at the Scottish Arts Council, presenter of book programmes for Scottish Television, and founder Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She was shortlisted in 2014 and 2020 for the Agent of the Year Award. She was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021.
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Kim Sherwood
Kim Sherwood will be chairing our event with Sara Sheridan and Lesley McDowell on history’s forgotten women walking in men's shadows.
She is an author and creative writing lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. Her first novel, Testament, won the Bath Novel Award and Harper’s Bazaar Big Book Award. In 2019, she was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second book, Double or Nothing, is the first in a series commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to expand the world of James Bond. The follow-up, A Spy Like Me, came out in April 2024.