Emma Catherwood
About
Emma is a fantasy writer originally from North Wales, now living in the US. As a child, she found escape in writing and designing books for her cousins' birthdays — a habit that grew into a love of reading and art, and a steady devouring of Anne Rice, Terry Pratchett, James Herbert, and Neil Gaiman, alongside anything the local library had on mythology. Books, art, and research have provided solace ever since, making libraries something close to devout places of worship.
When she's not writing or reading, Emma can usually be found outside.
"Wherever I am, I'm always in search of the same thing—a winding trail, a quiet hillside, a place where stories seem to linger in the air."
Her work is shaped by a lifelong fascination with history, art, and mythology — particularly the rich, haunting threads of Celtic lore. She studied Art History and Literature at the Open University before completing a Master's in Creative Writing, grounding her imagination in both scholarship and storytelling craft.
Whether writing Middle Grade or Adult Fantasy, Emma returns again and again to the same enduring themes: found family, the presence of magic in the everyday, the echoes of history, and the way art can hold both memory and myth. Her stories live at the crossroads of past and present, where the ordinary slips quietly into the extraordinary.
Why I Write
Ancient stories have always felt closer than history books suggest. I love to spend hours lost in the books, tracing half-forgotten legends through cracked spines and faded margins — Celtic gods, standing stones, and the folklore that still lingers if you know where to look. Every world I write starts there, in the space between what was recorded and what was only ever whispered. Places I usually find while out walking.
What These Worlds Share
Whether it's a steam-powered city or the courts of ancient Ireland, my stories keep returning to the same handful of truths: that family is often chosen rather than given, that magic hides in the ordinary far more than we notice, and that history never really ends — it just waits to be found again. Every book is a different door, but they all open onto the same landscape.
