Katherine Stansfield

Katherine Stansfield is a poet and novelist. A resident of Wales since 2002, she grew up in Cornwall and much of her writing explores Cornish history and landscape. Her first novel, The Visitor (Parthian, 2013), won the Fiction Prize at the 2014 Holyer an Gof awards. Playing House, her debut poetry collection, was published by Seren in 2014. It includes ‘Canada’ which was ‘Poem of the Week’ in the Guardian online.

Her recent work has taken her into the world of crime fiction, particularly the development of the first detective force in Britain. Falling Creatures (Allison and Busby, 2017) is the story of a murder that took place in 1844 on a remote spot of moorland near where Katherine grew up. The sequel is set in St Nectan’s Glen, a wooded valley near Boscastle popularised by Victorian writers and artists. For her second poetry collection, Katherine was the recipient of a Literature Wales bursary to support her writing time. This book offers a personal exploration of the relationship between the Welsh and Cornish languages, and engages with identity politics at home and abroad.

Katherine began her teaching work as a lecturer in creative writing at Aberystwyth University, and has also taught for the Open University and Cardiff University’s department of continuing and professional education. She regularly runs workshops on writing and publishing for different organisations, including Honno Press, the Dylan Thomas Centre, and the Arts Council of Wales-funded Hotpot project at Aberystwyth Arts Centre which focused on food and ceramics.