Congratulations on being Shortlisted for the Carnegie prize, who told you and what was your immediate response when you found out? (we can star swears if it was a swear!)
Thank you so much! I received the news in an email from my editor and I think my response was ‘OH MY GOD THIS IS CRAZY!!!’ I couldn’t believe it. I was still getting over the fact that Wolf Siren had been nominated in the first place and I don’t even think the longlisting had sunk in. It is such wonderful news and absolutely beyond my wildest dreams.
Wolf Siren takes readers on a fascinating journey, what do you hope young readers take from it most?
Oh, thank you so much for saying that. I honestly hope that young readers are able to become immersed in that journey. My favourite books as a child, and even now, are the ones where you feel like you’re there with the characters and feeling alongside them. But there are also themes that I felt were important to cover, such as courage and truth in the face of controlling powers, particularly for women and girls.
Your story shares with readers some of the intricacies of visual impairment, what did you want to convey in readers’ imaginations throughout Wolf Siren?
I really wanted to show that between having full sight and being totally blind, there is an in-between. By telling the story from the point of view of a girl with a visual impairment, I was able to show this in a way that I think even people who know me found helpful in understanding what and how I (and Red!) see.
Red uses various senses, contexts and knowledge to face what she does. Difficult I know but what three words would you use to describe how she (and maybe you) sees the world?
Is it cheating to use the words you just used in the question? Probably. So I will say light, colours and guesswork!
Wolf Siren is the kind of story that really sticks with a reader long after they have turned the final page. What’s one book you read as a child or young adult that has stayed with you into adulthood?
That is so kind and it truly means a lot, so thank you. I re-read books and much as I read new ones. Many of them are stories I loved as a child and I find something very comforting in going back to them. Choosing just one is difficult! I re-listen to the audiobooks of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at least once a year and J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books even more so!
What is the Best Bit and the Worst Bit about writing a book. And what is one Random Rest bit (which has no positive or negative assigned to it rather it is an interesting piece of information) about writing this book in particular?
For me, the best bit about writing a book is becoming so immersed in the work that the world you’ve created feels like the real one. I love being there with the characters, the pure exhilaration of figuring out a plot point, or when the story seems to just slot into place so perfectly it feels like you’ve uncovered the “truth” rather than made it up! I might sound like I’m exaggerating just how exciting this is but it genuinely gives me a rush!
For me, the part I tend to put off is re-reading my own words. It’s just a mental block I have where I feel like if I read it, I might hate it. But I tend to do all my chores to procrastinate and then force myself to go back to it so at least my home gets cleaned!
An interesting thing about the process of writing Wolf Siren was when it came to the editing stage and my editor, rightly, pointed out that I hadn’t described what a single person looked like which made it hard for the reader to remember who everyone was. I hadn’t intentionally not described people; it was just that the only physical descriptions I (and Red) could plausibly give were very generic and wouldn’t have been that memorable either. I did my best to add in what I could, but I definitely didn’t want to include details that Red wouldn’t have been able to see, so in the end what we did was allow Red to delve into some of these characters back stories, mention who they were in relation to her family, things they’d done in the past that informed Red’s opinion on them. Then, the next time that character appeared, I could make a little reference to that and (hopefully) this would jog the reader’s memory.
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Many thanks to Beth for answering our questions and a huge congratulations on Wolf Siren being shortlisted for the 2026 Carnegie Award for Writing. The Winner and the Shadowers’ Choice Winner will be announced on June 23rd and voting is now open for schools doing Shadowing to cast their votes. You can find out more about Wolf Siren and the discounts schools get using the link below.
