Jo Durrant presents : Crime

Description

Monday 2nd June 7pm – in Script Haven

Jo Durrant is the host for our crime author panel this year. The panel will comprise leading authors Jackie Kabler, Anna Mazzola, Melanie Golding, and Jo Ward.

Jo Durrant is the award-winning presenter of the independent arts & science podcast ‘Jo Durrant’s Beautiful Universe’. She’s a highly respected and accomplished interviewer and event chair, and a familiar face at literature, history, and science festivals. For over 20 years Jo was a presenter, producer & reporter with BBC radio and interviewed hundreds of people, from Melanie C to Tim Peake. She is now freelance.

Jackie Kabler is a television presenter and award-winning crime writer. Her bestselling psychological thrillers – published by One More Chapter at HarperCollins – have sold over a million copies in English alone and been translated into eight languages. They include Am I Guilty?, The Perfect Couple, The Happy Family, The Murder List,  The Vanishing of Class 3B and The Life Sentence.

Anna Mazzola is an award-winning writer of historical fiction and modern thrillers. Her debut novel, The Unseeing, won an Edgar Allan Poe award. Her fourth novel, The House of Whispers, won a Fingerprint Award for Best Historical Crime novel. Her bestselling third novel, The Clockwork Girl, was shortlisted for various awards and nominated for the Dublin Literary award. Her fifth novel, The Book of Secrets, was a Times Historical Novel of 2023. Her first legal thriller, Notes on a Drowning, was published in January 2025 under the name Anna Sharpe and was named as a thriller or crime novel of the month by The Times, Daily Mail and i-Paper. When not writing, Anna works as a human rights and criminal justice solicitor acting for survivors of crime..

Melanie Golding is a graduate of the MA in creative writing program at Bath Spa University, with distinction. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. Little Darlings was her first novel, and has been optioned for screen by Free Range Films, the team behind the adaptation of My Cousin Rachel.

Jo Ward is a senior forensics specialist in the West Midlands. She investigates high-profile crimes, including murder, domestic killings, attempted murder, infanticide and rape. Jo has been working in crime scene investigation for nearly twenty-six years. Her life and work have been the topic of a BBC Two television documentary, Forensics – the Real CSI. Her book “Every Contact Leaves a Trace – My Life as a Crime Scene Investigator” was published in 2024.