Polly Crosby
Author Interview - Polly Crosby
Author of The Women Of Pearl Island
Set on a secluded and wild island off the English coast, The Women of Pearl Island is a moving and evocative story about family secrets, natural wonders and a mystery spanning decades.
Author Interview - Polly Crosby
Author I draw inspiration from: I love Diane Setterfield's work for its beautiful storytelling, and I adore Bridget Collins' novels for their clever plotting and ethereal world building. Fairytales and myths always seem to wind their way into my writing, too, often without me realising!
Author Interview - Polly Crosby | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book: Anywhere I won't be disturbed! I actually love sitting in my car on the school run while I wait for my son, because I have no distractions. At home, my favourite place is curled up in a chair in front of the woodburner, with the cat on my lap.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Definitely Merricat from We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson. I'm not sure she'd talk much, but I can just feel the delicious tension of that encounter!
Author Interview - Polly Crosby | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: The moment I began telling stories, so probably when I was four! I wrote my first novel age 19, but it took another 3 novels and twenty years to get published. Writing isn't just a job to me, it's a part of who I am. I can't imagine not doing it.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: I love hardbacks for their beauty, paperbacks for their practicality and ebooks for travelling. I love audiobooks too, especially when I'm driving, but I'm really picky about the narrator. If I had to choose, it would be paperbacks - you can fit more of them on your bookshelves!
The last book I read: I'm currently reading Midnight in Everwood by M A Kuzniar, which is a beautiful re-telling of The Nutcracker, full of icy glitter and deliciously dark confectionary. It's out in the US in January.
Author Interview - Polly Crosby | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer: Pen and paper when I need to bash out an idea (but my handwriting is so bad that I can't always read it back!) I have a laptop for the actual novel writing, but I'll write on anything if I need to! I make notes and write short scenes on my phone if I'm out and about, and I sometimes use voice memos if I have an idea in the bath!
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Gosh, this is a difficult one! I think it would have to be Cassandra Mortmain from I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith (she of One Hundred and One Dalmatians fame). Cassandra lives in a derelict castle in Suffolk, England in the 1930s, and she wants to be a writer. I imagine if I had lived then, we would get on quite well. Plus, I really, really want to explore that castle.
Author Interview - Polly Crosby | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: Something arty. I love painting and drawing, and I have a small (now often neglected) business in making hand-painted silver jewellery. My artistic side has come in handy for designing window displays for my books in UK bookshops, and for creating pretty insta shots. My novels are also quite visually descriptive, and they often have an artistic strand running through them somewhere, too.
Favorite decade in fashion history: The twenties, which is coincidentally when my novel is partly set! I love the simplicity of the dresses, yet they were so exquisite. And all the silk and the jewels and the colours! I'm drooling, can you tell?
Place I’d most like to travel: Japan. The food, the incredible countryside, the amazing tech. All so very different to my beloved England, and yet still somehow familiar. But I've been at home due to Covid for so long now that I can't even imagine travelling to London, let alone Tokyo!
My signature drink: A Margarita. Delish. Or a good old cup of tea, strong, with a drop of milk.
Favorite artist: This is a great question, but blimey it's hard! I love slightly eerie, gothic children's book illustrators like Arthur Rackham, but I also adore huge installations of modern art, the bigger the better. I went to see a piece on Hampstead Heath a few years ago before I was published, called The Writer. It was a giant table with a chair, the size of a house. Seeing it made me decide I must push on with a story idea I had had. It eventually became my debut novel, The Book of Hidden Wonders. Art can do that!
Number one on my bucket list: I think, to just be able to keep on writing. It took me many years to become an author, and there is nothing I love more than sitting down, opening up the laptop, and beginning to type.
Anything else you'd like to add: Just thank you so much for having me! xxx
Find more from the author:
Twitter: @writerpolly
Insta: @Polly_Crosby
Facebook: PollyCrosbyAuthor - https://www.facebook.com/pollycrosbyauthor
Author Bio: Polly Crosby grew up on the Suffolk coast, and now lives with her husband and son in Norfolk. Her debut novel, The Book of Hidden Wonders, won Curtis Brown Creative's Yesterday Scholarship, and was runner up in the Bridport Prize's Peggy Chapman Andrews Award for a First Novel. Polly also received the Annabel Abbs Creative Writing Scholarship at the University of East Anglia. She is currently working on her third novel.
