Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Rebecca Hannigan
Rebecca Hannigan: 'I wanted to be a writer, but that seemed too much of a risk. Marketing was steady and dependable.'
“I was interested in acting and storytelling,” she says. “I wasn’t sporty, but I was sociable, and good at making friends.”
Rebecca’s mum was a huge reader of crime fiction.
“I remember reading her copy of Mark Billingham’s when I was 12 or 13.”
After university Rebecca worked in marketing for 10 years — in a variety of companies.
“I wanted to be a writer, but that seemed too much of a risk.
“Marketing was steady and dependable.”
Ten years ago, meeting a writer in a pub, Rebecca realised that ‘normal’ people like her could become writers.
“He had been at the same university as me,” she says.
Rebecca enrolled in creative writing classes, and writing groups.
“I’m a fast writer, but I couldn’t finish a book.”
That’s why she decided to do an MA in Creative Writing.
“The dissertation is a full length novel,” she says. “I started at the start of the course.”
It won the Little Brown/UEA Crime Writing Award in 2023.
Croydon, London, in 1988 to Irish immigrant parents, but raised in Sunderland.
Sunderland High School; University of Leicester, BA in English, MA in Marketing; University of East Anglia, MA in Creative writing, crime fiction.
Chelmsford Essex.
Husband, James; cat, Joni.
Full-time writer.
“I’d loved to design home furniture.”
Laura Lipman; Tana French; hanif Abdurraqib; Olivia Laing; Ruth Ware; Kerri Link.
“I have a rough draft.”
“Write something that really lights you up.”
@rebeccahanniganauthor
