Beth Underdown Wins HWA Goldsboro Crown Debut Award

Nov 3, 2017

Beth Underdown, has won the HWA Goldsboro Crown Debut award for her magnificent first novel, The Witchfinder’s Sister.

Published by Viking in March 2017, after Katy Loftus, acquiring editor, pre-empted rights from Nelle Andrew at PFD, the novel tells the story of Alice Hopkins, the sister of real life character Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General in 1640s England. His brutal persecution of women would see over a hundred innocents murdered in his pursuit of power, and this fascinating and resonant tale is told from the point of view of the one woman who knew him best and yet is as much of a victim as anyone else: his sister.

The HWA Goldsboro Crown Debut award honours the best historical novel by a first-time fiction author of any nationality first published in the UK in English. Beth Underdown is the latest in winner of this ward, with previous winners being 2016’s Cecilia Ekback (Wolf Winter) and 2015’s Ben Fergusson (The Spring of Kasper Meier).

TV rights have already been sold in The Witchfinder’s Sister, as well as international rights. The Paperback is due to be published on the 14th December 2017.