Readers - Books and Conversations - Francesca De Tores

This is a series of in-depth and relaxed conversations with authors about their latest work, and their body of work, their writing process and the ideas that inspire them.

Francesca is an author and academic. As Francesca de Tores, she writes historical fiction. Her latest novel is Saltblood (April 2024, Bloomsbury), based on the true story of Mary Read, a historical figure from piracy’s Golden Age.

As Francesca Haig, she is the author of four novels. The most recent, The Cookbook of Common Prayer, was published in 2021. Her post-apocalyptic Fire Sermon trilogy is published in more than 20 languages. The first novel, The Fire Sermon, was published in 2015, followed by The Map of Bones in 2016, and concluded with The Forever Ship in 2017.

Francesca grew up in lutruwita/Tasmania, gained her PhD from the University of Melbourne, and was a senior lecturer and a Visiting Writing Fellow at the University of Chester. Her poetry has been published in literary journals and anthologies in both Australia and England and a collection of poetry, Bodies of Water, was published in 2006. In 2010 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. She lives in naarm/Melbourne, on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin nation.