Author Interviews Posts

We are thrilled for Elizabeth Lee, our 79th student to get a major book deal. Liz was awarded the Marian Keyes scholarship to study on our six-month online novel-writing course. After completing the course, Curtis Brown’s Lucy Morris fell in love with her novel, Cunning Women, a searing story of forbidden love and the curtailing […]

Anna Bailey finished our six-month online novel-writing course this summer. She quickly gained representation from Curtis Brown’s Alice Lutyens, and now has a major two book deal with Doubleday, who fought off stiff competition to publish her debut novel, Tall Bones. A literary crime novel set in a small-town in Colorado, Tall Bones is about […]

Andrew Michael Hurley is a critically-acclaimed, prize-winning author – his debut novel The Loney was originally published by Tartarus Press (a small independent publisher based in Yorkshire) as a 300-copy limited edition, before being republished by John Murray in 2015. It went on to win the Costa First Novel Award and Book of the Year […]

Joe Moran is the author of several academic books and numerous scholarly articles, most recently on the history and politics of everyday life. He is currently a reader in cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. He writes for, among others, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement. His most recent book […]

Robin Scott-Elliot took a selective online novel-writing course with us in 2016. Since taking the course Robin has discovered his passion for writing for children. His debut middle grade novel The Tzar’s Curious Runaways is out now from Everything with Words. Read on to find out more about Robin’s journey to publication … You were […]

Author Jodie Chapman took a novel-writing course with CBC in London in 2016. Among her student cohort were authors Ella Berman and Louise McCreesh (their debuts are set to be published in 2020) as well as Rachael Blok whose second novel The Scorched Earth was published earlier this year. Now Jodie is following suit, and […]

Penny Chrimes studied with award winning author Catherine Johnson on our online Writing YA and Children’s Fiction course in 2016. Now she’s represented by Curtis Brown agent Lisa Babalis and has an exciting two-book deal with Hachette Children’s Group for two middle grade novels. We found out more about her journey to publication … You […]

Julietta Henderson studied on our three-month online novel-writing course in 2013. She met her agent, C&W’s Sue Armstrong on one of our alumni summer schools and now she has a fantastic six-figure two-book deal with Transworld for her debut novel The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman. We caught up with Julietta to find our more about the […]

Jack Meggitt-Phillips was studying on our three-month novel-writing course in London this time last year. Now he is our 73rd student with a major publishing deal! Jack is author of The Beast and the Bethany, a middle-grade children’s book set to be published by Egmont in Autumn 2020.  We caught up with Jack to talk beasts, books and […]

We asked author-illustrators Sarah McIntyre and David O’Connell to share some of the secrets behind their approach to creating characters and worlds for a children’s picture book.