(© 2022)

I am originally from Lancaster in the north of England but moved south to take up a job in the late 1990s. I now live on the edge of the Fens with my husband and daughter. In some ways, I see myself as a northern writer, though that I am a writer at all surprises me. Growing up in difficult family circumstances, I saw writing as something other people did, but I always read. It never occurred to me that I could or ever would write a novel.

My first novel, The Words in my Hand, was written with the support of a grant from Arts Council England and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and longlisted for the Prix du Roman FNAC. My second novel, The Year Without Summer, was published in Feb 2020. It was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown and longlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Further information about the book is towards the bottom of the following page: YWS. I am a MacDowell Fellow and worked on my second novel there between November 2017 and January 2018.  My third novel, Privilege, a story of book publishing and censorship set in mid-18thc England and France, was published by Two Roads books in May 2022. My short fiction has appeared in Mslexia, The Scotsman and in a collection from The National Galleries of Scotland.

I teach creative writing at Birkbeck University, London. I also work as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. I mentor for Gold Dust.

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I am interested in fiction’s critical function: that is, how fiction can be used as a means to interrogate the past, (and to some extent question how history has been written). The political novel is sometimes disdained. But any novel that claims to sit above and outside of politics also makes its own evasive point. I see my writing as a way to face the world and to answer the questions I have. Writing for the Atlantic in 2010, Menachem Kaiser notes: ‘If history teaches and (harshly) informs, then literature rouses and intimately disturbs,’ and, ‘The eternal role of literature is to make it new again, to make it real, to make it felt’. I couldn’t agree more.

The Words in My Hand — the story of Dutch maid Helena Jans and French philosopher René Descartes — questions the historiography around Descartes and the lack of curiosity many historians and biographers have shown his lover, Helena Jans. Helena knew Descartes at a pivotal time in his life — why, then, when their relationship is known of, is she almost completely overlooked? The novel decentres Descartes and turns the ‘great man of history’ narrative on its head, challenging clichés about him.

The Year Without Summer is a novel of climate breakdown and crisis. It is rooted in Fenland where I live, a low-lying region in the East of England, which faces profound threats from climate change. My thinking was also shaped by Amitav Ghosh’s 2016 work, The Great Derangement in which he takes novelists to task for largely failing to deal with the most pressing issue of our time: climate change. In 1816, most people had little or no knowledge of the Tambora eruption that devastated so much of the world that year. Those who had heard of the eruption did not understand its connection to what they were living through. Famine, disease, floods, wildfire, drought — all triggered by a small shift in global temperature. The Year Without Summer became a way to think of climate crisis not just as separate, isolated events. The Littleport Bread or Blood riots of April 1816 seem, on the surface, little more than a local story of protest and its brutal suppression. Instead, these riots open up a much larger story: a story of sudden climate breakdown that connected local events with an event many thousands of miles away, linking the near and far. The Tambora eruption triggered a global crisis of unprecedented magnitude in modern times, the effects of which would continue to shape the world for decades. Please see my article for Historia Magazine: The Year Without Summer – fact, fiction and the climate crisis today.

My third novel, Privilege, May 2022, is a reflection on the fragility of our literary culture. It is a story of book publishing and censorship, set in mid 18thc England and France, when books required royal privilege before they could be published. The novel explores the difficulty and enormous risks associated with bringing work into the public domain at the time. The novel is therefore not only a story of the eighteenth century, but is also a story of now, and a defence of writing at a time of rising populism and the assault on reason. Above all, it is a call for tolerance, understanding, empathy; for us to find common cause in a world that fast seems to be splintering apart.

Early praise for Privilege:

‘. . . quirky and well-written. A novel of ideas.’ The Times, 28th May, 2022.

‘. . . conjures up a society in which written words can be as dangerous as deeds.’ Sunday Times, 22nd May 2022.

‘Among historical novelists, Glasfurd rides high . . .’
FT Weekend, 14th May 2022

‘Glasfurd deftly, elegantly captures this volatile world of impoverished attic rooms and gilded literary salons, where ideas are incendiary and words have the power to kill.’ Daily Mail, 6th May 2022

‘Marvellous . . . fans of immersive historical fiction, the 18th century, all things French and a dash of peril, this one’s for you.’ ― Emily Brand, author of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BYRON

‘A wonderfully engaging novel which reminds us why the freedom to write without fear of persecution remains a privilege which we must always defend.’ Alice Jolly

‘Set in eighteenth century France, Privilege takes us into the vividly dramatic world of Delphine, self-taught and rebellious, who is effectively orphaned by her father’s arrest. In Paris she meets Chancery, a naive Scottish printer’s apprentice who is miles out of his depth in this country where freedom of the press – for both readers and writers – is literally a burning issue. Feminism and censorship are just two of the themes that make this novel very timely in 2022. Tightly plotted and hugely readable.’
Jane Rogers, author of Mr Wroe’s Virgins and The Voyage Home.

‘. . . it’s the story of us all and our attitude to our own kind. If only we could accept others as we do ourselves; if only tolerance, care and love were our watchwords; if only we could look at a single word and realise its universe, how content we would be . . . this is an adventure of all of us and it’s up to us to see that it ends in success in the next generation and far, far beyond.’
Bookseller, Topping’s, Ely.

I am currently at work on my fourth novel, which weaves together a story from 1381 and the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the Peasants’ Revolt in the East of England, with a story from 2019 and a young man heading north through England, on foot. The novel explores the intersection between past and present.

I am also writing a series of short stories, as a way to explore how the Enlightenment and chattel slavery in the British West Indies wove together through the eighteenth century. This is partly based on reckoning (if that even is possible) with the story of two of my eighteenth-century forebears, John and Duncan Glasfurd, who made their way from Bo’ness, Scotland, to St Kitts in the late eighteenth century. You can read their story and how I found out about it here.

Other work:

In 2019, I was writer in residence at Wicken Fen, the National Trust’s oldest reserve and a site of international importance. I was also in receipt of a grant from Arts Council England (Developing Your Creative Practice) to work on a project on ‘placemaking’ at Waterbeach New Town. The outcome of that project is here:

I have also worked collaboratively with artists in the UK and South Africa and my work has been funded under the Artists’ International Development Fund, (Arts Council England and the British Council). Details of that project, which saw me work with fine artist Richard Penn at Nirox, Johannesburg, can be found here: http://mailout.co/cambridge-based-artists-secure-arts-council-funding-to-develop-international-projects/ I’ve since been commissioned to produce work in support of  Penn’s most recent exhibition, Surface Detail, at the Origins’ Centre.

I am represented by Veronique Baxter, at David Higham Associates.

The Words in My Hand is published by:

Two Roads
Ullstein
Luitingh-Sijthoff
Le Livre de Poche (Préludes Editions)
Laguna
Siruela
BTC Sahinpasic

I can also be found online at:

https://twitter.com/guinglasfurd @guinglasfurd

FB: https://www.facebook.com/GuinevereGlasfurdBooks