Northern Highlight - Susannah Lloyd

NORTHERN HIGHLIGHT

SUSANNAH LLOYD

Why did you become a writer? 

I have always loved children’s books. I’ve so many happy memories of being read to as a child by my parents and teachers, and they were such good books too, like Trubloff, The Mouse Who Wanted To Play The Balalaika, Mr Rabbit and The Lovely Present, and Burglar Bill. I have collected them all again, read them to my own children and I think I've developed an almost religious reverence for them!

I used to write stories all the time when I was a child, and I still have some of my first attempts at picture books, made with felt tips and wonky stapled bits of paper on my kitchen table when I was five. But when I was around twelve or thirteen I made the terrible error of giving up on this dream. I thought ‘real’ writers would feel that writing was incredibly fluid and easy, would never write anything disastrous on a first draft, and would never have had hundreds of red spelling corrections scrawled all over their stories at school, like I did.

But of course I was very wrong about all of those things. It took me until I was nearly forty to realise that, but now I’m making up for lost time. Now I think that, even in all those years when I didn’t write a thing, I must have been a writer deep down, because I remained an avid reader and whenever I read a sentence that really shone, I would think to myself, I really wish I had written that!

Illustrated by Jacob Grant & published by Frances Lincoln.

Tell us about where you live.

I live just on the outskirts of Saltaire, which was built for the workers of a big Victorian cloth mill. It has a wood that fills up with bluebells in the springtime, a park with a bandstand, a river with a resident heron and canal with a resident kingfisher. The old SALTS Mill now has a gallery brimming with Hockney landscapes and a bookshop with an amazing selection of pictures books, all displayed lovingly facing outwards. I spent so much time there when my kids were younger, dreaming about having a book of my own. We also have loads of incredible museums and galleries in the region. In Keighley there is Cliffe Castle, which houses, among many other things, a brilliant collection of startled Victorian taxidermy and a large case of weevils labelled ‘Weevils of Keighley’. Our local Waterstones in Bradford has to be a contender for the most beautiful bookshop in Britain, as it's in an old Wool Exchange and it's got an enormous, high, arched ceiling and massive church-like windows. 

Where do you write? 

I create most of my stories away from my desk, mostly on meandering walks, in the bath, or just at random moments of the day. All of a sudden some characters will start talking to each other in my head, and I have to stop whatever I’m doing, grab a scrap of paper, or the nearest thing I can get my hands on - like a paper bag from the bakery or the back of a soap packet. I have to scribble it all down before all that chatter evaporates, because it disappears perilously fast.

I gather up all these little scrippets of paper and gradually pile them up in little piles in my study until I’m finally ready to put them all together into a story on my laptop. I have two beautiful posters in my study to inspire me - Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea and The Monster From Halfway to Nowhere by Max Velhuijs, as well as lots of artwork created by my sons when they were small. I have various trinkets in there too, including a tiny bowler hat, a melancholy stuffed goose toy and a leopard with little pearl strings for teeth.

Illustrated by Ellie Snowdon & published by Simon and Schuster.

 What for you is the ‘Spirit of the North’?

Ah! The Spirit of the North, with long robes, whiskery beard, and a thoroughly wuther-ed face -  who arrives at the stroke of midnight  to remind the world of publishing of the great well of talent and potential to be tapped in the North!  But actually I think The Spirit has already visited, as times are changing in exciting ways. Hachette has recently opened up a northern office in Manchester and I think more will follow.

How has this spirit influenced your work?

I’m originally from down South, and Yorkshire is my adopted home, so time will tell on this one! But I think your environment must always influence your work via the snippets of conversation overheard and things glimpsed that later become the seeds of an idea. All that I am sure of is that the Weevils of Keighley are sure to feature in one of my books at some point.

Who for you are the great northern writers?

From history, I think I would choose Ted Hughes. I have read The Iron Man over and over again and I will never tire of it. The Space Bat Angel Dragon had me utterly captivated as a child and it still does.

My favourite modern children’s writer based in the North is Bethan Woollvin. Her picture books are often based on old fairy tales but they feel so fresh and new and are told in such visually creative ways.

If you could be transported to anywhere in the North right now, where would it be?

Right now, in lockdown, the thing I am dreaming about the most is going to the seaside. When lockdown ends I will go straight to Whitby or to Robin Hood's Bay for fish and chips, salty sea air, an ice-cream and a pebbly paddle. My favourite seaside game is ‘stone noses’ where you compete to find the most nose-like pebble on the beach and try them all out for size to see which suits you the best, so I love a good pebbly beech.

What would you like to see from children’s publishing in the North?

Fresh voices! I think it’s very hard for teenagers and young adults in the north to imagine themselves starting out in a career in publishing without completely relocating to the South. I’d love for that to change. I would also love to see the wide diversity of children in the North reflected in children’s books. Many children still can’t find a character that looks or sounds like them - or has had experiences anything like theirs - in the bookshops or in their school library, and it can make them feel that children’s books just aren’t for them. 

What’s your favourite children’s book set in the North? 

I ransacked my bookshelves for one and found them wanting! As I child I loved classics like The Secret Garden and The Railway Children but these both seem very much like a biscuit-tin version of Yorkshire written through outsider eyes to me now. I will be studying the other writer and illustrator’s answers to this closely!

You can find out more about Susannah and her books via her website and social media -

Website: www.susannahlloyd.com

Twitter & Instagram: @Susannah_Lloyd