Ask the Author: Katharine Quarmby
Answered Questions (6)
Katharine Quarmby
I experience it as a muddy feeling in my head. I have always had migraines since puberty, so it actually feels quite like migraines to me. But I've also learnt that I can, slugglishly, push through it, even though every word is an effort. It is easier to re-write than to write. So I write.
Katharine Quarmby
I love writing books for children because it's fun!
I love writing adult fiction because it takes me (and hopefully readers) to new places.
I love writing non-fiction because I think good non-fiction has the power to challenge injustice.
I love writing adult fiction because it takes me (and hopefully readers) to new places.
I love writing non-fiction because I think good non-fiction has the power to challenge injustice.
Katharine Quarmby
It may be unfashionable to say so, as some writers have slated them, but I have really enjoyed going on writing courses myself - I did two at Arvon (and am doing a speaking session at Arvon as a tutor this, weird to be changing roles). Many years ago, when I was a young teenager, I went on a course at Norwich Writing Centre and the wonderful novelist who was teaching the course told me I had it in me to become a writer. Although my family had been very supportive, it really helped to get that neutral encouragement.
Katharine Quarmby
I recently finished my third full-length non-fiction book, Hear My Cry, co-written with a British Yemen 'honour' violence survivor. It is being published first in other European countries, but I hope here as well soon.
Katharine Quarmby
It depends on whether it's non-fiction or fiction. Of course, for journalism, my day job, I often get commissions (or pitch). Sometimes (quite often) that work has led on to a book-length project. For instance, Scapegoat started with an investigation of the killing of a disabled man. Fifty or so articles later, I thought I had a book! Similarly, with No Place to Call Home, that started with a 2006 visit to the Irish Traveller site in Essex (later evicted in 2011) called Dale Farm. With fiction, it's more unconscious - both for children and adult writing. It can come from a newspaper piece, or from something in real life, but then it evolves.
Katharine Quarmby
I'm not sure which of my books this refers to - but if it is The Priest, The Assassin and Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, it is part of our family history. My mother's grandfather was the Dean of Sarajevo, Kosta Bozic, and spent time in prison as a nationalist during the First World War. According to family legend, he blessed Gavrilo Princip, the man who is thought to have triggered the First World War, before the assassination. This is a fictional account of that time.
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