Crime writers collide with live theatre...
The Ancient Priors in Crawley High Street is the perfect setting for this dark and spooky crime event. Join our host,Doctor Who writer Guy Adams, as he leads us through the various rooms of the building and introduces us to three acclaimed crime writers Alexandra Benedict, Anna Mazzola and Ally Wilkes, who will each entertain with a dark short story. The evening concludes with a Q & A panel hosted by Guy with the three crime writers. Come with your questions ready...
There will be an interval with refreshments and book sales.
Alexandra Benedict is an award-winning writer of novels, short stories and scripts. She read English at the University of Cambridge and then studied Creative Writing at the University of Sussex. As AK Benedict, she published the critically acclaimed The Beauty of Murder, The Evidence of Ghosts and The Stone House. Her short ghost and crime stories have appeared in numerous anthologies such as Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror. She has also written extensively for audio, including Doctor Who and Torchwood scripts for Big Finish, Arkham County for audible UK and Children of the Stones for BBC Sounds/Radio 4. She has won a Scribe award and was shortlisted for the 2021 BBC Audio Award.
As Alexandra Benedict, she writes Christmas mysteries inspired by the Golden Age of crime, with added contemporary darkness. The Christmas Murder Game was nominated for a Gold Dagger Award, Murder on the Christmas Express is an international bestseller, and her latest, The Christmas Jigsaw Murders, out last year, is being translated into ten languages so far and is a UK hardback bestseller.
Alexandra lives by the sea with writer Guy Adams, their daughter, Verity, and dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.
Anna Mazzola is the award-winning and bestselling author of five historical crime or Gothic novels. Her debut novel, The Unseeing, won an Edgar Allan Poe award. Her third novel, The Clockwork Girl, set in 18th century Paris, was shortlisted for two CWA Dagger awards and a Fingerprint Award, and nominated for the Dublin Literary award. Her fourth novel, The House of Whispers, a ghost story set in Fascist Italy, was a Sunday Times historical fiction novel of 2023. Her fifth historical novel, The Book of Secrets, is a tale of sorcery and sisterhood based on a real case from 17th century Rome and will be out in March 2024. Her first legal thriller will be published in 2025 under the name Anna Sharpe.
She is also a human rights and criminal justice solicitor working with survivors of crime. She lives in South London, with one husband, two children, a black cat and a snake.
Find Anna online at
https://www.facebook.com/AnnaMazzolaWriter/
https://www.instagram.com/annamazzolawriter/
Ally Wilkes, the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of All the White Spaces and Where the Dead Wait, grew up in a succession of isolated—possibly haunted—country houses and boarding schools. After studying law at Oxford, she went on to spend eleven years as a criminal barrister. Her short stories have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Three Crows, and numerous anthologies. Ally now lives in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton. You can follow Ally on Twitter @UnheimlichManvr or on Instagram @AV_Wilkes.
Guy Adams
As a ghost writer, Guy has kicked heroin, robbed a casino, worked as a prison doctor and enjoyed the riches that come as part of being a hugely successful YouTuber.
When feeling more himself, he is the author of The Clown Service novels, the Heavens Gate trilogy and the famous sixties newspaper strip that never existed, Goldtiger. He also writes comics for various publishers including 2000AD.
He has twice been a finalist in the BBC Audio Drama Awards and as well as writing hundreds of hours of Doctor Who is the co-author of Arkham County for Audible and Children of the Stones for BBC Sounds.
He also writes about and reviews and watches and watches and watches film.
He lives in Eastbourne with fellow author and live-in genius AK Benedict and their daughters (one hairy and canine, the other human) Verity and Dame Margaret Rutherford.
