Sibéal Pounder, author of 'Tinsel: The Girls Who Invented Christmas' - Children's author talks writing courses, finding the tone and writing a sense of magic.

Sibéal Pounder's debut 'Witch Wars' was shortlisted for the Sainsbury's Children's Book Award and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. She then wrote 'The Bad Mermaids' series which was a World Book Day 2019 title and a Sunday Times Bestseller and has been optioned by Sony Animation.


Her newest novel is 'Tinsel: The Girls Who Invented Christmas', which figures out if Santa might be a bit different to the person everyone thinks they are. We talk about writing for kids and capturing the magic of Christmas with words. You can hear why she had the idea for this book for a while, before finally being allowed to write it. We also discuss how she feels publishing a book with a limited selling life every year, but why even with this, the character of Blanche made her need to tell the story.


Before writing novels, she worked as a journalist, writing for publications including The Guardian and Vogue online and was a philanthropy columnist for the Financial Times. We chat about the difference in writing journalism and novels, and why she took a writing course before getting started on books.


You can get a copy of the book here - https://amzn.to/3gB0olj


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