Author Interviews Posts

It’s been quite a year for Struan Murray, who took our London-based novel-writing course way back in 2013. For Struan – as for many of our students, the path to publication has been long and started out bumpy: he finished a novel and gained an agent soon after his CBC course, but not a publisher.

Ann-Marie Howell is our 50th former novel-writing student to get a major publishing deal. Her debut middle grade novel, The Garden of Found and Lost, will be published by Usborne in 2019. Ann-Marie was a student on our online Writing YA and Children’s Fiction course back in 2015 (check out this blog about her time on the course). Here we […]

David O’Connell, is an author-illustrator and he leads our new Writing a Children’s Picture Book course. His first illustrated children’s chapter book, Monster & Chips, came out in 2013, and he worked with Sarah McIntyre (who leads the Illustrating a Children’s Picture Book course) on the children’s picture book Jampires. He has also collaborated with Sam Watkins, Francesca Gambatesa and Tom Nicoll. His latest children’s chapter book […]

We caught up with author-illustrator Sarah McIntyre who is one of the tutors on our brand new online children’s picture book courses. Sarah leads our Illustrating a Children’s Picture Book course, her solo picture books include There’s a Shark in the Bath, Dinosaur Firefighters, and The New Neighbours. She has also worked with writers like David O’Connell (who leads our new […]

Angela Chadwick was a student on our 6-month online novel-writing course in 2015. Angela’s debut novel XX was one of Sharmaine Lovegroves’ first acquisitions for the new Little, Brown imprint, Dialogue Books, and will be published in hardback and ebook this October. XX follows a lesbian couple who take part in the first trial of ovum to ovum fertilisation. […]

Rae DelBianco was a student on our London novel-writing course in 2015 – in fact she came over from the US for six months specifically to study on our course! Her much anticipated debut Rough Animals was published by Arcade in the US earlier this month, and is currently being translated into French and Italian. We caught up with Rae to discuss […]

Rachel Marks took our 3-month online novel-writing course taught by Lisa O’Donnell back in 2016. Now her debut novel has been sold at auction to Michael Joseph (part of the Penguin Random House group) via Curtis Brown agent Alice Lutyens, who represents more former CBC students than any other literary agent – including Jane Harper, Kate Hamer and Catherine Bennetto. Rachel’s novel, The […]

We are utterly thrilled to say that Kiare Ladner, the current HW Fisher scholar on our London-based novel-writing course, has just landed a major book deal. Nightshift, the novel she was working on in class,  has been snapped up by Picador in a deal agented by Curtis Brown’s Cathryn Summerhayes. We caught up with Kiare to […]

Rachel Marks took our 3-month online novel-writing course taught by Lisa O’Donnell back in 2016. Now her debut novel has been sold at auction to Michael Joseph (part of the Penguin Random House group) via Curtis Brown agent Alice Lutyens, who represents more former CBC students than any other literary agent – including Jane Harper, Kate Hamer […]

We’re utterly thrilled that the fabulous Marian Keyes  is personally funding one place on our Six-Month Online Novel-Writing Course this Autumn, for a talented writer who needs financial assistance in order to be able to join the course. The Marian Keyes Scholarship is now open for applications, so do take a look. In the meantime, we chatted to Marian – one […]