Hazel Gaynor
Born (1971-05-16) 16 May 1971[1]
Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
OccupationWriter
Alma materManchester Metropolitan University
GenreHistorical fiction, fantasy, romance
Notable awards
Children2
Website
www.hazelgaynor.com

Hazel Gaynor (born 16 May 1971) is an English author of historical fiction and fantasy based in Ireland.

Early and personal life

Gaynor is from Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire.[2] She graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University. She and her sister lost their mother in 1995.[3] She lived in Manchester, Australia, and London in the 1990s. She moved to Ireland in 2001 after meeting her now husband through a mutual friend in Dublin. They settled in Kilcullen, County Kildare in 2004 where they have raised their two sons.[4][5]

Career

Gaynor began her career in professional services. After the 2008 recession left her redundant from her job as a learning and development executive at the Irish law firm A&L Goodbody, she decided to pursue her passion of writing. She ran a personal blog titled Hot Cross Mum, which became an e-book in 2011. She contributed to and interviewed authors such as Philippa Gregory for the likes of Writing.ie.[6]

Gaynor self-published her debut fiction novel The Girl Who Came Home, based on the true story of 14 Irish emigrants on the Titanic, on Kindle in 2012. She received the Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award at Kildare Readers' Festival that year.[7] In 2013, she landed her first publishing deal with HarperCollins under the William Morrow imprint, who re-published the novel in print in 2014. It became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and was named the Romantic Novelists' Association Historical Novel of the Year.[8] She signed with a New York agent.

Her second novel A Memory of Violets, originally titled Daughters of the Flowers, was published in February 2015. The character of Albert Shaw is based on John Grooms.[9] It appeared in WHSmith's spring selection.[10]

This was followed by The Girl from the Savoy on London's interwar period in June 2016, a Globe and Mail and Irish Times best seller shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards.[11]

In August 2017, Gaynor published her first fantasy novel The Cottingley Secret, a fictionalisation of the Cottingley fairies story from 1917 Yorkshire.[12] Gaynor's October 2018 novel The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter was a USA Today and Irish Times bestseller. Shortlisted for a Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award,[13][14] the story of Grace Darling had fascinated Gaynor from a young age.[15]

Her 2020 book, set at a boarding school in 1941 China, was published under the name The Bird in the Bamboo Cave in August in some countries and When We Were Young & Brave elsewhere in October.[16]

Collaborations

In 2016, Gaynor wrote a short story for the collection Fall of Poppies.

Gaynor has collaborated with American author Heather Webb on Last Christmas in Paris (2017), Meet Me in Monaco (2019) featuring Grace Kelly, and Three Words for Goodbye (2021) (co-written over the COVID-19 lockdown).[17] The former won the 2018 Women's Fiction Writers Association STAR Award in the General Category.[18] The latter was one of BuzzFeed's July picks.[19]

Gaynor runs the Inspiration Project, which conducts workshops for aspiring writers, with Catherine Ryan Howard and Carmel Harrington.[20]

Bibliography

Fiction

  • The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic (2012)
  • A Memory of Violets: A Novel of London's Flower Sellers (2015)
  • The Girl from the Savoy (2016)
  • The Cottingley Secret (2017)
  • Last Christmas in Paris: A Novel of World War I (2017), co-written with Heather Webb
  • The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter (2018)
  • Meet Me in Monaco (2019), co-written with Heather Webb
  • The Bird in the Bamboo Cave / When We Were Young & Brave (2020)
  • Three Words for Goodbye (2021), co-written with Heather Webb

Short stories

  • "Hush" in Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War (2016)

Nonfiction

  • Hot Cross Mum: Bitesize Slices of Motherhood (2011)

References

  1. ↑ "Girl Who Came Home (Gaynor): Author Bio". Lit Lovers. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  2. ↑ "Launches, readings and signings". Hazel Gaynor. 10 March 2021. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  3. ↑ Hourican, Emily (24 April 2015). "The girl who dared... author Hazel Gaynor on journey from rejection to bestseller". Independent.ie. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  4. ↑ Grenham, Sophie (23 November 2018). "Writer's Block with Hazel Gaynor". The Gloss. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  5. ↑ Peppard, Sarah (5 November 2017). "My Kildare Life with Kilcullen Author Hazel Gaynor". Leinster Leader. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  6. ↑ "Book Review: Hot Cross Mum: bitesize slices of motherhood". Mummy Pages. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  7. ↑ Gaynor, Hazel (15 October 2012). "Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award". Writing.ie. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  8. ↑ "The Girl Who Came Home". HarperCollins. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  9. ↑ Steen, Jane. "A Memory of Violets by Hazel Gaynor Brings Victorian Philanthropy to Life". Historical Novel Society. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  10. ↑ "Hazel Gaynor". Booksparks. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  11. ↑ "The Girl from the Savoy". Irish Book Awards. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  12. ↑ Gaynor, Hazel (1 August 2017). "Inside the Elaborate Hoax That Made British Society Believe in Fairies". TIME. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  13. ↑ "Hazel Gaynor's The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter longlisted for 2019 HWA Gold Crown". Writing.ie. 8 August 2019. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  14. ↑ "The Girl from the Savoy: A Novel". IndieBound.org. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  15. ↑ "Hazel Gaynor". Sue Leonard. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  16. ↑ O'Sullivan, Joanne (20 September 2020). "The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor, review". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  17. ↑ McFarland, Anna (20 July 2021). "Gaynor and Webb Novel, 'Three Words for Goodbye,' Takes Readers on a Journey". NPR Illinois. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  18. ↑ "2018 STAR Award Winners". Women's Fiction Writers Association STAR Award. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  19. ↑ Multiple (13 July 2021). "Here Are BuzzFeed's Picks For The Best Books Of July 2021". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
  20. ↑ Bielenberg, Kim (15 August 2021). "WriteSide: Hazel Gaynor". Independent.ie. Retrieved 2 October 2021.
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