Writing Historical Fiction

Natasha Pulley is the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Bloomsbury, 2016), The Bedlam Stacks (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Lost Future of Pepperharrow (Bloomsbury, 2020), The Kingdoms (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The Half Life of Valery K (Bloomsbury, 2022). An international bestseller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, the Locus Awards, and remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for much of summer 2016. The Bedlam Stacks was longlisted for the Walter Scott Award and shortlisted for the Encore Award. Natasha has lived in Japan as a Daiwa Scholar, as well as China and Peru. She was a 2016 Gladstone Writer in Residence, and she teaches on Bath Spa University’s Creative Writing BA, alongside short courses at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her latest novel, The Mars House, will be published by Orion in 2024. 

Susan Stokes-Chapman grew up in the historic Georgian city of Lichfield, Staffordshire, but now lives in north-west Wales. She studied at Aberystwyth University, graduating with a BA in Education & English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel Pandora (Harvill Secker, 2022) is a loose reinterpretation of the Greek myth Pandora's Box. Set in Georgian London, it tells the story of aspiring jewellery artist Dora Blake and her encounter with an ancient vase that her tyrannical uncle is desperately keen to keep a secret. The novel became an instant number one Sunday Times bestseller, and in 2020 was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Bath Novel Award. www.susanstokeschapman.com