Meet the Author: Liz Hyder

Image (c) Ashleigh Cadet

Liz Hyder is a writer, creative workshop leader and freelance arts PR consultant. In early 2018, she won The Bridge Award/ Moniack Mhor's Emerging Writer Award. Bearmouth, a novel for young adults, was published by Pushkin Press in 2019 and won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2020 in the Older Readers category. It was also The Times Children's Book of the Year and a Sunday Times and Financial Times Book of the Year.

Liz’s debut book for adults, The Gifts, is published by Manilla Press in February 2022 and is also available on our catalogue.

1. Who were your heroes as you were growing up and when did you first start writing?

Ooh, I don’t really know about heroes but I remember discovering Michael Rosen when I was in primary school thanks to a lovely teacher called Mr Frowde and I fell in love with Rosen's writing. He was the first person I read that I felt really understood me. In Quick, Let’s Get Out of Here, he wrote about tomboys and train journeys, football matches and dinosaurs in snowdrifts, and I loved - still love - every single story and poem in that book. Paula Danziger too, The Pistachio Prescription still makes me laugh like a drain. She’s an incredibly funny writer and, for me, totally captured what it felt like to be an awkward early teen.

In terms of writing, I’ve always written really. I’m the youngest of three and my Mum’s incredibly creative. We were always having little projects on the go like creating our own magazines. And then, at secondary school, a group of us started up a newspaper for the princely sum of 20p per edition, the same price as a pack of Space Raiders…

2. Before you became a writer you worked for BBC publicity. What was that experience like?

Amazing! I was very lucky. At the time, I remember just applying for any and every creative job going anywhere in London and the South East and then I got an interview for a publicity assistant on a sort of graduate trainee scheme at the BBC. I couldn’t believe it when I actually got the job. I started as an assistant on EastEnders, Holby and Casualty and it was long hours but lots of fun. I learnt a lot very quickly.

I was at the Beeb for six years and moved around a fair bit, from drama TV to documentaries, from Radio 2 and 6 Music to Radio 4. I loved it. I got to work with incredible people, producers and presenters, actors, comedians, writers and directors. I’ve got a signed Albert Square road sign from my early days and sometimes I look at it and have to sort of pinch myself to remember that I really did work on that show!

3. The publication of Bearmouth and the awards it won established you as a writer. What was it like to suddenly get that level of attention for your work?

Bonkers to be honest! I’d been writing for years, all sorts of things really. Short films, screenplays, stage plays, novels, poems, short stories, you name it. And then I got to the stage where I’d been long listed or short-listed for things but wasn’t really getting any further. So I wrote Bearmouth entirely from the heart, thinking it was such a strange Marmite-y book that there was no way it would get published.

And then it did. And I braced myself for everyone hating it but that wasn’t really what happened! Thankfully lots of people really loved it and I wasn't prepared for that. I’ve developed a fairly thick skin over the years but actually dealing with praise was sort of the hardest thing in a way. It was very surreal. I’ve been very lucky.

4. What is your writing routine?

It depends where I am with an idea really. If I’m in research mode, I’ll be reading a lot of books, maybe watching films or documentaries and making lots of notes. I walk a fair bit too, partly to clear my head but it helps me pace out the plot and characters too. I do listen to a lot of music and sort of create a soundtrack or musical mood-board for each book too.

When I’m in writing mode, I write fast. I tend to edit in the morning and then write in the afternoon. I aim to write about 3k words a day if I can and sometimes it’s less, sometimes more. And I’ll use that same mood-music for that too. It helps intensify the emotions when I’m writing. I have a small windowless corner that I sometimes work from as well as a proper desk that looks out across town and to the hills beyond. And sometimes, in truth, I sit and write cross-legged on the sofa!

5. Can you tell us a little about your first novel for adults, The Gifts?

I’d love to! It’s a sort of rollicking adventure story really. A slice of imagined Victorian history, it’s set in 1840 and opens with a young woman growing wings in the wild woods of Shropshire. It tells the story of four women - an aspiring young journalist, a botanist, a storyteller and an artist - and their lives interweave with that of a ruthlessly ambitious London surgeon who threatens to put all of them in the most terrible danger…

6. Will you continue to write YA novels?

Yes! Absolutely. I’d love to. More on that front soon I’m sure!

7. Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

But of course! My next novel, after The Gifts, is also set in the Victorian period, but at the tail-end of the century when technological developments really shift up a gear. There’s motorised transport, electric trams, moving images and the rise of the bicycle – how could I resist? It’s a whirlwind adventure set in 1896 on the cusp of the advent of film and is about the overlap between the early days of the moving image and the golden age of Victorian magicians. It's heavily inspired by real-life illusionists and film-pioneers and features monstrous egos and generous hearts, greed and rivalry, tales of double-dealing and fantastical tricks, love and friendship, and, I hope, sheds a little spotlight on one of the most thrillingly exciting periods in British cultural history.

8. One book, film or piece of art that everyone should experience?

Ooh that’s hard… I’m going to cheat and pick one of each and these are the ones that come to mind right now so if you asked me next week or even tomorrow, I might change my mind! For film, I’ll suggest Victim. It's an incredibly powerful piece of storytelling that also campaigns against social injustice. Starring Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Sims, it features complex characters in a plot that twists and turns really unexpectedly. It’s extraordinary.

For a book, I’m going to choose Hawkfall by George Mackay Brown, the Orcadian poet and writer. It’s a collection of short stories set in Orkney over different time periods and it’s stunning. I don’t think he’s as well known as he should be outside of Scotland these days and that’s a great pity. His writing is immersive, atmospheric and utterly exquisite.

For art, it’d have to be something by Paula Rego. Maybe Angel or The Dance. I love the way she uses different mediums, her use of oil pastels is out of this world. I find her work to be truly thought-provoking and visceral. She’s incredible.

9. What is the best advice you were ever given?

I’ve actually stolen it and put it in The Gifts! I was a member of National Youth Theatre in their design department in my teens and I’d been working on a huge scenic backdrop with my friend Charlotte that we hadn’t quite finished. Nick Ferguson, a lovely man who was one of the big bosses, made us step back and look at it from a distance, asking us what bits weren’t finished. So we told him in immense detail and he said, ‘you have to understand that it’ll never be finished. You just have to learn the right time to step away from it.’ It’s brilliant advice and has stayed with me all these years even though I’m a terrible fiddler with things so I’m still useless at abiding by it.

The other bit of advice I loved was from the prolific TV writer Lisa Holdsworth. I remember someone asking her what advice she’d give an aspiring writer and she just said ‘Got a pen? Crack on!’ and it still makes me laugh. It is, of course, also true..

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

I’m a bit of a bird nerd. Well, a wildlife geek in general but I do particularly love birds. When I was a kid, I had a book that had a red-backed shrike on one side and a golden oriole on the facing page. They were my sort of birdy holy grail and I’ve been lucky enough to see both. Shrikes in Sweden and the Isles of Scilly and orioles in Kerala. Just last year I saw ring ouzels for the first time both near where I live and on the Welsh coast too. There are some brilliant wildlife photographers near me in Shropshire and so we do swap tips sometimes! That really is nerdy isn’t it?!