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Martyn Bedford

Novelist

About

Martyn Bedford is an award-winning writer of fiction for adults and teenagers. His novels have been translated into 13 languages and have been published to critical acclaim in the United States. They include Acts of Revision (Bantam Press), winner of the Yorkshire Post best first work award, The Houdini Girl (Penguin) and The Island of Lost Souls (Bloomsbury). Flip (Walker Books), his first novel for teenagers, won four prizes in the UK and was shortlisted for several others, including the Costa children’s book award. Martyn Bedford’s short stories have been published in newspapers, magazines and anthologies and broadcast on the radio and the internet. One of them, Letters Home (Comma Press), was adapted for film.

Teaching is his other passion. He has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, has taught creative writing in higher education since 2001 — including spells at the University of Manchester, the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University — and is a regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Since 2009, he has been an associate senior lecturer at Leeds Trinity University where he co-designed its creative writing MA. As a writer for teenagers, Martyn Bedford is a regular visitor to schools across the UK to give talks and run writing workshops. He has also taught English in Hong Kong.

Before becoming a fiction-writer, he worked as a newspaper journalist. He was born and raised in Croydon but has lived for many years west Yorkshire with his wife and two daughters.

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