Years 7, 8, and 9 pupils were privileged to hear Costa Award-winning author Frances Hardinge speak about her books and writing process.

Frances, who has had ten children’s and YA books published, admitted that her books are all “a bit strange” combining dark fantasy, murder mystery, the supernatural and folklore. She creates fantastic alternative worlds for her stories, weaving fragments of ideas from a range of sources such as fairy tales, historical periods, places she’s visited, and events in the news.

The Wilds in Frances’ most recent book Unraveller was inspired by her last pre-pandemic trip to the Cloud Forest on La Gomera. Unraveller is the story of a world where people develop the ability to inflict life-destroying curses on others, the teenage boy who has the power to unravel these curses, and the teenage girl who deals with the trauma in the humans rescued from their curses. Pupils were invited to consider whether it would be right or wrong to imprison those with the potential to curse before they had committed any wrongdoing, and how it would feel to direct your curse against someone usually untouchable.

During the Q&A Frances said she didn’t reread her books cover-to-cover after they had been published as then they felt like real permanent books rather than the stitched-together word monsters from when she was working on them.

Frances also ran two creative writing workshops for Year 9 pupils discussing secrets and why people might have a secret.

Find out more about Frances and her books here.