Meet the Author: Dreda Say Mitchell

Dreda Say Mitchell MBE is an award winning crime author, broadcaster, journalist and campaigner. She has been a frequent guest on TV and radio and also presented Radio 4's Open Book. Dreda's latest book Trap Door and her earlier books are available through our catalogue.

Who were your literary heroes as you were growing up and when did you first realise that you wanted to write?

Alice Walker's The Color Purple made a huge impression on me as a young woman. It’s a book that’s stayed with me over the years and I, along with so many others, will always owe it a debt. As for myself, like many poor children, I grew up in a very creative environment where stories, music and a love of language were very much in the air we breathed. I think it was probably this that made progressing to writing such a natural thing.

Can you give us a flavour of your latest book Trap Door?

It’s a psychological thriller about a young woman whose traumatic past has blighted her life. Backed into a corner, she has to take an unlikely job to settle her debts. Meanwhile, her new employers have secrets of their own. It’s an incendiary cocktail that finally brings our heroine to confront herself.

You've been writing with Tony Mason since Vendetta in 2014. How does your writing partnership work?

Like the course of true love, it doesn’t always run smooth but we’re both natural collaborators so we get there in the end. We each bring a different skill set and add and subtract from the other’s ideas.

Your books often feature strong female characters. Is this something you grew up with?

Totally. I’m in awe of those women I remember from my childhood, both in my own family and in the neighbouring homes. Tough, no-nonsense women who had to deal with all the troubles that comes with being poor while at the same time, bringing up children and earning a living. Time and again those women turn up in my fiction.

Is there anything you can share about your latest project?

We’ve got various book projects on the go including another psychological thriller but the most immediate one means I’m back on my home turf! We’re creating a new East End gangland series whose main character bares a strong resemblance to the women I mentioned in the previous question.

Can you please tell us a little about the work you have done with the Reading Agency with prisons and rehabilitation?

The work I’ve done in prisons and with the Reading Agency is very important to me on a number of levels. Where I grew up, crime was considered a career option by some young men who in other circumstances might have lived very different lives. I believe that for some of those young men at least, those different lives might still be possible. Literacy is a key to this but not only as a practical skill, it also helps unlock talents and allows people to express themselves in ways they may not previously have thought of.

Probably not a question you get asked often but we always buy masses of the Quick Reads titles. You wrote One False Move in 2017. How does writing a Quick Read title differ from your usual novels?

Writing a Quick Read is rather like writing a full-length novel only more so. It has all the usual ingredients but within a narrower narrative structure. Quick Reads are also about improving adult literacy skills so careful attention is paid to the type of words used and sentence structure. Writing One False Move was such cracking fun!

Do you have a message for your readers in Suffolk libraries?

Thank you so much for reading my books! As someone who spent a lot of time in Whitechapel library as a youngster my message is heartfelt - use your library, support your library, engage with your library and defend your library. Libraries are an absolutely essential part of any community’s culture.

Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

As a teenager, I was East London Girls’ shot put champion.