A CWA Historical Dagger shortlisted author, Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. Her inner introvert thought it would be a good idea to become a shepherd and, frankly, if she had she might have been published sooner.
As it was, three years reading English at Oxford revealed an extrovert streak and a social conscience which sent her off to train as a Speech and Language Therapist.
She has spent the subsequent three decades variously working in a burger restaurant, bringing up two sons, working with homeless people and helping families to understand their autistic children. And writing. Always. Nonfiction (autism related), plays (commissioned for production in heritage locations) and, of course, novels.
Initially fascinated by the medieval period, she began her crime and mystery career at Pan Macmillan with a historical novel set during the fourteenth century then fast-forwarded to West Wales in the nineteenth century to fulfil a long-held desire to write a book based on Wales’s best kept historical secret: the Rebecca Riots. The resulting historical crime series features blind investigator Harry Probert-Lloyd and his chippy assistant, John Davies.
As a side-effect of setting her series in Ceredigion, instead of making research trips to sunny climes like more foresighted writers, she drives up the M4 to see her family.
