Lucy Christopher, author of young adult novels Stolen, Flyaway and The Killing Woods, was born in Wales but grew up in Australia. She moved back to the UK to earn a distinction in the Creative Writing MA from Bath Spa University. Stolen was written as the creative part of her PhD in Creative Writing, also at Bath Spa University. Lucy now works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, teaching on the undergraduate and the MA creative writing courses.
Stolen won several international awards including the Branford Boase (UK), the Gold Inky (Australia), Prix Farniente (Belgium) and a Printz Honor Award (USA). It also achieved numerous shortlistings including for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (Australia), as well as being longlisted for the Carnegie Medal (UK). Flyaway won an International Reading Association Award (USA), and was shortlisted for the Costa Prize (UK), the Waterstones prize (UK), the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (Australia), as well as longlisted for the Carnegie Medal (UK).
Lucy’s books have been translated numerous times and Lucy has toured extensively overseas. Lucy is now working on the screen adaptation of Stolen as well as her fourth novel for young adults.
STOLEN
It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him. This is my story. A letter from nowhere.
Told in a letter to her captor by 16-year-old Gemma, Stolen explores the influence that a really wild and remote space can have on the inner development of a young woman.
Gemma, a British city-living teenager, is kidnapped while on holiday with her parents. Her kidnapper, Ty, takes her to the wild land of outback Australia. To Gemma’s city-eyes, the landscape is harsh and unforgiving and there are no other signs of human life for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Here, there is no escape. Gemma must learn to deal with her predicament, or die trying to fight it.
Ty, a young man, has other ideas for her. His childhood experience of living in outback Australia has forever changed the way he sees things. But he too has been living in the city; Gemma’s city. Unlike Gemma, however, he has had enough. In outback Australia he sees an opportunity for a new kind of life; a life more connected to the earth. He has been watching and learning about Gemma for many years; when he kidnaps her, his plan finally begins to take shape.
But Ty is not a stereotypical kidnapper and, over time, Gemma comes to see Ty in a new light, a light in which he is something more sensitive. The mysteries of Ty, and the mystery of her new life, start to take hold. She begins to feel something for her kidnapper when he wakes screaming in the night. Over the time spent with her captor, Gemma’s appreciation of him develops …but is this real love, or Stockholm Syndrome?
FLYAWAY
One cold winter morning, Dad gets sick – and goes into hospital. It’s there I meet Harry, with his scruffy hair and firefly eyes. From his window we watch a wild swan on the frozen lake outside. There’s something different about her, truly different. Almost magical. Perhaps, if we can help her, everything else will begin to make sense.
While visiting her father in hospital, Isla meets Harry, the first boy to understand her and her love of the outdoors. But Harry is ill, and as his health fails, Isla is determined to help him in the only way she knows how.
Together they watch a lone swan struggling to fly on the lake outside Harry’s window. Isla believes that if she can help the damaged swan, somehow she can help Harry. And in doing so, she embarks upon a breathtakingly magical journey of her own.
THE KILLING WOODS
Emily’s dad is accused of murdering a teenage girl. Emily is sure he is innocent, but what happened that night in the woods behind their house where she used to play as a child? Determined to find out, she seeks out Damon Hillary, the enigmatic boyfriend of the murdered girl. He also knows these woods. Maybe they could help each other. But he’s got secrets of his own about games that are played in the dark.
Great, friendly trainers. The course had lots of helpful stuff.