Writing Crime Fiction with a Twist

Alis Hawkins was raised on a dairy farm in Ceredigion and currently lives on the Welsh-English border. Her Teifi Valley Coroner historical crime series, set in the area where she grew up, has twice been shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Historical Dagger. She also writes fiction set in the medieval period. Alis is a proud Cymraes and, in an effort to promote Welsh culture and Welsh crime fiction in particular to the wider world, in 2017 she co-founded Crime Cymru, the collective of Welsh crime writers which now numbers forty published authors. She is also chair of Gŵyl Crime Cymru Festival, Wales’ international crime fiction festival, and was instrumental in establishing the Crime Cymru First Novel Prize with other Crime Cymru members. When not writing her own books, Alis works with both published and yet-to-be published authors as a freelance editor and mentor, as well as being a speaker and interviewer at crime fiction festivals and book events. She is currently working on a new historical crime fiction series, set in Oxford in the 1880s. 

Katherine Stansfield is a multi-genre novelist and poet. Her historical crime series Cornish Mysteries has won the Holyer an Gof Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Winston Graham Memorial Prize. The most recent instalment is The Mermaid's Call (Allison & Busby, 2020). She co-writes a fantasy crime trilogy with her partner David Towsey, publishing as D. K. Fields, and has also published two full length poetry collections and a pamphlet with Seren. Katherine is co-editor, with Caroline Oakley, of Cast a Long Shadow, a collection of new crime short stories by women writers from Wales, published by Honno (2022). She teaches creative writing for a number of universities and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. In 2021, along with fellow members of Crime Cymru – the Welsh crime writers’ collective – Katherine launched a new prize for debut crime writers in Wales.