Maggie Gee and William Shaw

William Shaw’s taut thrilller ‘Deadland’, set in the brooding shadows of Dungeness, and Maggie Gee’s literary crime caper ‘Blood’, a black comedy set around Margate – the authors talk about Kent as the setting for their work and how they each confront its social divisions, with murderous results.

William Shaw’s ‘The Birdwatcher’, set in Kent and Northern Ireland, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and hailed as ‘a contender for thriller of the year’ in The Sun. His books have also been nominated for a Barry Award, the Golden Bullet, and the CWA Historical Dagger. Other novels include ‘Salt Lane’, ‘A Song from Dead Lips’, ‘A House of Knives’, ‘A Book of Scars’ and ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. He has worked as a journalist for over twenty years.

Maggie Gee OBE is a novelist and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her many published works include ‘Virginia Woolf in Manhattan’, ‘The Ice People’, ‘My Cleaner’, ‘The White Family’, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and a writer’s memoir, ‘My Animal Life’ (2010). Her most recent novel, ‘Blood’, is set in Kent. In 2012 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature.