Martyn Bedford

Martyn Bedford, an internationally renowned novelist, has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He has written five novels for adults: Acts of Revision (Transworld 1996), winner of the national Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award; Exit, Orange & Red (Transworld 1997); The Houdini Girl (Penguin 1999); Black Cat (Penguin 2000); and The Island of Lost Souls (Bloomsbury 2006). Between them, his novels have been translated into 13 languages and two of them – Acts of Revision and The Houdini Girl – were published in the U.S. He has also written a solo short-story collection, Letters Home (Comma Press, 2017).

Martyn also writes for teenage and young adult readers. His debut novel in the genre, Flip, was published to critical acclaim in 2011 by Walker Books in the UK and by Wendy Lamb Books (an imprint of Random House) in the U.S. It was also published in Canada and, in translation, in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, China and Thailand. Flip won four regional prizes in the UK and was shortlisted for the prestigious Costa Book Awards. His second teen/YA novel, Never Ending, was published in 2014 in the UK, U.S., Canada, Germany and Poland and was nominated for the 2015 Carnegie Medal. His third teen/YA novel, Twenty Questions for Gloria, was published in spring 2016 in the UK, the U.S. and Canada, and in translation in Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands. His latest YA novel, The House that Jacaranda Built (Yaffle Press) is scheduled for publication in spring 2021.

In addition to his solo collection, Martyn has also had numerous short stories published in anthologies, newspapers and magazines and broadcast on radio and the Internet. The most recent are Withen, published in the anthology Protest: Stories of Revolution (Comma Press 2017), My Soul to Keep, published in the anthology Spindles: Stories from the Science of Sleep (Comma Press 2015), and The Sayer of the Sooth, published in a science-fiction anthology, Beta-Life: Stories from an A-Life Future (Comma Press 2014). These stories were researched in collaboration, respectively, with leading academics on their fields at Sheffield Hallam University, Exeter University and Manchester Metropolitan University. Two stories - Room Zero (2015) and A Capsule of Time (2013) - were written as special commissions for Malvern College, Worcestershire, and Wellington College, Berkshire, to celebrate World Book Day and were published on the schools' intranets. A Missing Persons Inquiry appeared in the Crime Writers’ Association anthology M.O. (Comma Press 2008). Another story, Letters Home (Leeds Stories, Comma Press 2006), was made into a short film, premiering at the 2009 Version Film Festival, at the Cornerhouse, in Manchester.

From 2008-2010, Martyn was a Royal Literary Fund academic writer-in-residence at Leeds Trinity, a role he also undertook at the University of Leeds: School of Law in 2018-19. He is also a Reading Round lector for the RLF (2019-21), running a community reading group. Martyn has previously taught creative writing at undergraduate and postgraduate level at the University of Manchester, the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University. He is External Examiner for the Creative Writing BA programmes at Liverpool John Moores University from October 2017 to September 2021.

Before becoming a writer and teacher, he worked for 12 years as a journalist in regional newspapers.

My main areas of interest are the novel, the short story and teenage/young adult fiction. I have been reading and researching teen/YA fiction in conjunction with work on my first four novels for that readership.