South Tyneside’s Crime Fiction Festival – Authors
We will be joined by writers at the top of their game for a day of author talks, question and answer sessions and book signings.
Sat 26 September, 10am-5.30pm at The Word
Find out about the writers joining us below.
Mark Billingham
Mark Billingham is one of the UK’s most acclaimed and popular crime writers. A former actor, television writer and stand-up comedian, his series of novels featuring D.I. Tom Thorne has twice won him the Crime Novel Of The Year Award as well as the Sherlock Award for Best British Detective and been nominated for seven CWA Daggers.
His standalone thriller In the Dark was chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Times and his debut novel, Sleepyhead was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 books that had shaped the decade. Each of his novels has been a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller.
A television series based on the Thorne novels was screened in Autumn 2010, starring David Morrissey as Tom Thorne and a BBC series based on the standalone thrillers In the Dark and Time of Death was shown in 2017
Chris Bridges
Chris Bridges is an alumnus of the 2022 London Writers Award. His debut novel Sick to Death was shortlisted for the 2025 McDermid Debut Awards. He previously wrote a weekly column for an LGBTQ+ lifestyle website and was a theatre reviewer for various sites. As a former NHS nurse with a hidden disability, he likes to feature the untold stories of sick, dying, and disabled people in his work and smash the trope of the passive disabled character with a background role. When not writing, he can be found reading compulsively or walking his uptight poodle, Frida Kahlo.
G.D. Wright
G.D. Wright joined Kent Police at the age of 18, working on the front line in a variety of uniformed roles until the age of 29 when, completely out of the blue, he suffered two cardiac ‘events’, and was subsequently diagnosed with a hereditary and incurable disease of the heart.As a result, he had an internal defibrillator implanted, and had to retire from the police aged 30. From then, he opened a coffee shop in Ramsgate Harbour, sold it when kids came along and now he writes full-time.
Zoe Rankin
Zoë Rankin grew up in Scotland. She studied International Relations with Arabic before going on to qualify as a teacher. She spent many years travelling in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and eventually settled in New Zealand. Her father was in mountain rescue in Scotland, and so her passion for the outdoors grew early. She spends a lot of time hiking and cycling with her husband and two young children in New Zealand, and the more remote locations inspired the idea for her debut novel The Vanishing Place.
Emma Styles
Emma Styles writes Australian crime fiction about young women taking on the patriarchy. Her debut novel, No Country for Girls, won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and the Little, Brown UEA Crime Fiction Award. It was a New Blood selection at Theakston’s Crime in Harrogate and was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Novel and the ACWA Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Fiction. The Shark is her second standalone thriller.
Ajay Chowdhury
Ajay Chowdhury was the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker–Bloody Scotland crime fiction award. He is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director who was born in India and now lives in London where he builds digital businesses, cooks experimental dishes for his wife and daughters and writes through the night.
The Waiter, published in 2021, is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures. Follow-up The Cook was a Sunday Times and Guardian Crime Book of 2022.
CJ Cooke
CJ Cooke’s work is published in 23 languages, has won numerous awards, and has been optioned for film and television. She writes about motherhood, mental illness, memory, and trauma. Her fiction is often classed as feminist gothic and/or psychological suspense.
CJ’s previous works include The Boy Who Could See Demons (2012), about a psychiatrist and her 10-year-old charge in post-Troubles Belfast, which was critically appraised by The New York Times, The Guardian, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, and The New York Review of Books, and I Know My Name, which was a No. 1 iBooks bestseller and optioned for TV.
Her novel, The Lighthouse Witches, was nominated for an Edgar Award and an ITW Thriller Award, and is an international bestseller. It is soon to be a major TV series produced by StudioCanal and The Picture Company. Her 2022 novel The Ghost Woods was a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month, and her 2024 novel The Book of Witching was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Selection.
Nicci Cloke
Nicci Cloke is the author of eight novels, including two under the pseudonym Phoebe Locke. Her books have been published in twelve languages. She lives in the Cambridgeshire countryside after a decade spent in London, and previously worked as a nanny, a cocktail waitress and a Christmas Elf to support her writing. Before being published, she worked as a permissions manager, looking after literary estates including those of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and T. S. Eliot, and was also communications manager at the Faber Academy.
Caroline Hulse
Caroline Hulse is an author of contemporary UK fiction. Her books have been published in fourteen languages and optioned for television. As C E Hulse she writes clever, funny crime. She is the author of four book club fiction novels under her full name: Reasonable People, All the Fun of the Fair, Like a House on Fire and The Adults. Vivian Dies Again is her first crime novel.
Abigail Dean
Abigail Dean was born in Manchester and grew up in the Peak District. She was formerly a Waterstones bookseller and a lawyer for Google. Her first novel, GIRL A, was a New York Times and Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a Kindle number 1 bestseller. Abigail’s latest novel is THE DEATH OF US, a love story interrupted by one terrible night of violence. It has been acclaimed by Stephen King, Cecelia Ahern, and Mick Herron. Abigail lives in London with her husband, children, and cantankerous cat. She has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books.
Araminta Hall
Araminta Hall’s latest book, UNRELIABLE NARRATOR, asks what you would do if you found your worst secret on the pages of a best-selling novel. It looks at the world of privilege and how some people get to tell their stories, whilst others don’t. It asks how far you’d go to protect your own narrative and if there’s ever one true version of events.
Her 2020 novel, IMPERFECT WOMEN, is now playing on Apple TV worldwide. It has been made into an eight part limited series staring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara.