Rachel grew up in Belfast and read English at Trinity College Dublin. She spent the next eight years in London working as an editor across various publishing houses (most recently as an editor of travel books, despite her notably shaky grasp of geography). She currently lives in Toronto, following her partner’s secondment there, where she works as a freelance editor.

“Inspiration for Her Name is Florence arrived in the form of a local news leaflet. I was living in Streatham at the time, and one was delivered that related – fairly starkly – the story of an unsolved Victorian murder case, the events of which had taken place within a couple of streets of my flat. Four hours later I was deep at the bottom of an internet rabbit hole, and every new fact that I discovered was increasingly fantastic. I continued reading around the subject – it’s a story that has fascinated journalists and crime writers since the first accounts were published during the inquest in 1876 – and quickly realised that I wanted to write my own fictional account of Florence Bravo’s extraordinary life.”

Our judge, Jenny Hewson of Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency, commented: “In judging the Caledonia Novel Award 2020 I was hoping to find a wide range of talented new authors writing across genres and subjects, and I was not disappointed. We saw lots of excellent historical fiction in particular, also crime, psychological thrillers, and literary fiction. And I was especially pleased to see entries from so many different countries from around the world. The Caledonia Novel Award attracts the best and brightest unpublished writing talent, and it has been my absolute pleasure to be involved as a judge.”

Charlotte was born in London and has a degree in history from Oxford. Following university she became a civil servant, which was a great apprenticeship as a writer: she has written everything from government consultation papers to ministerial speeches. As well as novels, Charlotte writes book reviews, articles and blogs about historical fiction. She is a member of the Board of the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs and lives in Brighton with a loud and disruptive cat.

“Shortly after moving to Crystal Palace in south-east London, I went for a walk in my local park. I wasn’t expecting to find dinosaurs there. But there they were: a set of huge, weird nineteenth-century sculptures in the middle of an otherwise-normal suburban setting. Why were they there? Who were the people behind them? These were the questions which eventually led to The Anatomist’s Wife. Based on the true story behind the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, the novel follows the lives of two women, Mary Ann Mantell and Caroline Owen. It explores the damage that the compulsive rivalry between their husbands did to them and their relationships, and ultimately it seeks to demonstrate the redemptive nature of love, hope and forgiveness.”

Sue Reynolds is a rural NSW based writer of literary and woman’s fiction, short stories, poetry and non-fiction therapy manuscripts for children and adults. She spent the 1980s on an isolated farm and then worked as a mental health social worker in a rural town with child and adult clients over a 23-year period. Her novel, The Clay Wife, won NSW Writers’ Varuna residency and the Byron Writers’ mentorship. She has three children and four grandsons and when not writing or working on their farm, she enjoys volunteering for Rural Aid and travelling Australia with her husband of many decades.

“The Clay Wife began as a series of diary entries, written over 10 years, to survive a move from the city to the country I hadn’t wanted to make. I left behind everything I loved and thrived on, except for my immediate family, to move onto an isolated farm with my in-laws, seven adults and nine children in total. The first 18 months were in a small caravan, the barbwire fence my clothesline, the days potting plants in the heat of a tin shed surrounded by people whose beliefs and interests were foreign to me. 

Joe Murphy was born in County Wexford, Ireland. In Enniscorthy Vocational College, he excelled at English, winning several awards and was shortlisted for National Young Science Fiction Writer of the Year. Joe studied English Literature at University College Dublin where he received 1st Class Honours and a scholarship to complete a Masters in Early Modern Drama. He went on to qualify as a secondary school teacher.

“I’m not sure why the macabre comes out in my writing. I did die, once. Maybe that has something to do with it. I lost my spleen playing football and was bleeding to death for three days without knowing it. When I eventually collapsed, an ambulance was rung. On the way to Wexford General, my heart stopped. People always ask me what it was like. The best way I can describe it is how when you wake up you have no recollection of the instant at which you fell asleep. One minute you’re there, next you’re waking up and there’s a paramedic leaning over you. The moment that you slipped away doesn’t even register. I think, perhaps, way back in my mind somewhere, that moment of darkness has nicked something. It bleeds out when I write. Even when I’m trying not to, there’s a gothic tinge to everything I do. It helps that I studied gothic fiction in university so the tropes and techniques are there to work with. The Taking of Colum Pyke was therefore inspired by my love of gothic fiction and my interest in history and Celtic mythology. Think the first series of True Detective but with an Irish accent.”

Jacquie grew up on the island of Guernsey, an upbringing which has left her with an enduring love of islands generally, as well as providing bucket-loads of inspiration for her shortlisted novel. She has always enjoyed watching people and making things up, and first saw her words in print at the age of 16, when her piece on school discos was included in an anthology, published by Virago Press. By day, Jacquie works as a writer and editor of books for children learning English as a Second Language, a job which she (mostly) loves and which has taken her all over world, most recently to Mexico and China. She lives in south-east London in a characterful but draughty flat which has seen the completion of two novels: she is currently contemplating the next.

“The Watcher of Hauteville House is a novel about a deaf man’s search for recognition, set against the backdrop of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War. It is impossible to grow up on Guernsey and remain oblivious to the impact of the German Occupation – the memories live on not just in the concrete bunkers and look-out towers which still populate the cliffs – but also, more interestingly, in the stories which have passed down through generations. My late grandmother, Doris, a lively storyteller in her own right, lived through the Occupation as a teenage girl; her anecdotes from that time piqued my imagination and it wasn’t long before an idea for a story started to form.