Noirwich 2020 has begun! Our crime writing festival is online this year, which means all the author events can be accessed for free here on the podcast and over on our YouTube channel. We kick off with an interview with Paddy Richardson, one of our 'virtual' writers in residence. Paddy is talking from Dunedin in New Zealand to our programme director Peggy Hughes.

Paddy Richardson is the author of two collections of short stories and seven novels. Traces of Red and Cross Fingers were long-listed for the Ngaio Marsh Crime Fiction Award and Hunting Blind and Swimming in the Dark were shortlisted. Through the Lonesome Dark was shortlisted for the New Zealand Historical Novel Award and longlisted for The Dublin International Literature Award.

Paddy has been awarded Creative New Zealand Awards, the University of Otago Burns Fellowship, the Beatson Fellowship and the James Wallace Arts Trust Residency Award. She has been a guest at many writing festivals and was one of the New Zealand writer representatives at both the Leipzig and Frankfurt Book Fairs in 2012 when New Zealand was the guest of honour. In 2019, she was awarded the Randell Cottage residency in Wellington where she spent six months writing and researching her latest novel to be published in 2021.

Read an extract from Swimming in the Dark: https://noirwich.co.uk/swimming-in-the-dark/

Read A Soft Flowing Veil of Grey, an exclusive reflection from Paddy: https://noirwich.co.uk/a-soft-flowing-veil-of-grey/ 

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Music by Bennet Maples.