Sue Bentley · Author & artist
Books are living entities — they take you on an adventure.
Sue writes fiction for children, young adults and adults. During her 30-year career she has published more than 80 books, written under five different pseudonyms and now publishes under her own name. Her books have been translated into over 20 languages and sold worldwide.
Sue is among the small minority of published UK authors from a working-class background. The eldest of five daughters, she wrote while holding down a job and raising a family, learning her craft from books, writing courses, trial and error, and years of determined practice.
She has always had an overactive imagination and a love of learning new things — useful qualities when thinking up storylines. Walking in nature helps her develop ideas and characters, while scraps of overheard café conversation have a habit of finding their way into dialogue.
Her favourite reading is historical, particularly the Victorian period, and she always has time for a good gothic mystery.
Beyond the manuscript
Longhand, mixed media & the natural world
In recent years Sue has rediscovered the pleasure of handwriting stories in spiral-bound notebooks with her favourite propelling pencils. The ritual of setting out notebooks and writing tools makes space for ideas to arrive in unexpected forms.
She is also a mixed-media artist, inspired by nature and by the interplay of light, shape, movement and texture. Her study holds vintage ink bottles, glass inkwells, dip pens and a little Smith & Corona typewriter rumoured to have belonged to a First World War journalist.
Events, rights & readers
Start a conversation
For press, rights, festival and event enquiries — or to send Sue a message about her books — use the contact form.
Sue is represented by Rupert Crew Ltd.
