Northern Highlight - Emma Mylrea

November 15, 2021

NORTHERN HIGHLIGHT

Emma Mylrea

How did you become a children’s writer?

I’ve always been an avid reader and harboured a secret hope that one day I’d be able to write a novel. I spent a year of my English Literature degree in Barcelona on an Erasmus exchange, and all my memories from that year abroad are punctuated by the books I read. Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia will always remind me of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the Ramblas is Titus Andronicus and I can’t drink a mojito without thinking of Mr Norris Changes Trains. My dad is an author, and when I was growing up his writing routine was part of our family routine; I think this normalised writing for me and made me believe that one day I could do it too. When my children were tiny, I started to write a story for them, and it slowly progressed from a fun hobby into a priority. I began to make non-negotiable time for it. It grew and grew, and that’s where Curse of the Dearmad began.

Tell us about where you live.

I live in the countryside on the outskirts of Stockport. It’s great having the bright lights of Manchester and the rolling hills of the Peak District a hop-skip-and-jump in either direction.

Where do you write?

I used to have a room of my own, my delicious little writing sanctuary covered in post-its and cue cards and littered with books. But The New Normal means my husband is working from home more and I have to share it with him now. I tend to write in the living room these days, at a table that faces the street. Seeing people in the real world walk by as I’m lost in my own is quite nice.

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

I was born in Bury but we moved to London when I was little and didn’t move back North until I was twelve, when we settled in the Peak District. Even as a five-year-old living in Surbiton I remember showing off to my friends that I was from Manchester. I didn’t want to talk like my friends, I wanted to have the same accent as my cousins. To me, being from Manchester was a source of enormous pride. I loved going back North, with the bags of hot buttered potatoes at Bury Market and trips to Heaton Park to see the animals. It felt like I was in an exclusive club every time I went back to Whitefield and sat around the table with my cousins, eating my grandma’s hotpot and listening to stories about my great grandad’s chippy in Salford and the Manchester dancehalls. When I was a teenager and we’d moved to the Peaks I still felt that affinity with Manchester, but I saw it in my new community too. I don’t know what the spirit of the North is, but something about it feels like home.

Has this spirit influenced your work?

Absolutely. In Curse of the Dearmad, the Shearwater family is a close unit. They come together over food and live in a tiny cottage with a big fire, in the middle of the woods. That was what my teenage years were like. My husband is from the Isle of Man, and that northern spirit resounds with him too, and I see it in the family we’ve built together. I think if you’re northern it bleeds into the way you see the world, and how you paint the world in your writing too.

Curse of the Dearmad by Emma Mylrea
Published by Tiny Tree Books
Illustrated by Hannah Jesse

Who for you are the great northern children’s writers?

I could read Ross Welford’s books all day long, and I often listen to his audiobooks when I’m walking my dogs. He paints family so beautifully, and I think he taps into childhood and teenage anxieties with a really good eye. For me, though, David Almond has a touch that is hard to compare with any other writer. I remember the first time I read Skellig and being completely transported, invested and hypnotised. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that both of these writers are from the North East, or if there’s something distinct in their voice which I find so engaging.

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

The Formby dunes, preferably on a sunny day in early Spring with a chill in the air and the sun on your face. If I’m allowed to traverse the water, it would have to be Cornaa on the Isle of Man though, where my inspiration for Jetty Beach in Curse of the Dearmad came from. My great grandad was from the Isle of Man and my husband is from there too; and I sometimes wonder if there is something in my genes that is pulling me back to the sea.

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

As a debut, I’m learning all the time and I’m sure my answer to this will be different when I’ve had more experience in the world of publishing. However, I would say that embracing the difference between north and south is a really compelling ideal to me. Giving northern writers a voice and exposure means adding more texture to what I believe is a really exciting time in children’s literature nationwide.

What's your favourite children's book set in the North/Scotland?

Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean has such a strong sense of place that there is no mistaking where it is set. The wilds of the North Kilda archipelago, the North Atlantic and the nature that surrounds the children is so real you almost feel weatherworn just reading it. It’s a wonderful book.