About this Event
Join us for an evening of superstitions, spirits and more as we welcome authors Jake Arnott, Heather Davey, Melinda Salisbury and Vanessa Santos to this folk horror panel! From mysterious seaside towns, to sinister yew trees, from monstrous local legends to Gothic tales of unrequited longing and unfathomable betrayal this panel is the perfect way to dive into the spooky season. Come along as we explore chilling tales and horrors passed down from times long forgotten.
Jake Arnott is the author of nine novels. His critically acclaimed and bestselling debut The Long Firm was adapted as a BAFTA award-winning BBC TV series. He has since published He Kills Coppers (which was made into a widely praised ITV1 drama) truecrime, Johnny Come Home, The Devil’s Paintbrush, The House of Rumour, The Fatal Tree and Blood Rival.
Heather Davey has an MA in Writing from Bath Spa University and was a student on the Curtis Brown Creative Finish Your Novel course. She has always been fascinated by ghost stories and was a contributor to the BBC2 series Uncanny. Outside of her work as a librarian, she runs creative writing workshops, and was a judge for the Yoto Carnegie Medals in 2025 and 2026.
Melinda Salisbury is the four-time Carnegie nominated and bestselling author of multiple teen and young adult novels, including the Sin Eater's Daughter series, Hold Back the Tide, and Her Dark Wings, a Guardian Children's Book of the Year 2022 and a Reading Agency Book of the Year 2022 pick.Her first novel, The Sin Eater's Daughter, was the bestselling UK YA debut novel of 2015. Collectively her books have been nominated and shortlisted for numerous national and international awards, including the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, the Branford Boase, the Edgar Awards, the 2016 and 2019, 2021 and 2023 Carnegie medals, YALSA Best YA 2022, Eason's YA Book of the Month, and more. Her books have been published in sixteen countries to date. Her latest YA novel, Local Gods is out now.Vanessa Santos was born and raised on a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic. She now lives in Scotland (though still by the sea) and spends as much of her time as possible devouring stories, writing stories, and wandering the endless Scottish woods. Her short fiction has been published online at Samjoko Magazine and Idle Ink, and in anthologies by Sliced Up Press, Colp, and Solar Press. Her debut short story collection, Make a Home of Me, was published by Dead Ink Books in 2025.
Event venue & nearby stays
Waterstones, Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom
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