Fantasycon 2021 is delighted to

announce Guest of Honour:

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Jen Williams

We are very pleased and proud to welcome Jen Williams as guest of honour for Fantasycon 2021.

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Jen Williams is a fantasy author whose work has become a mainstay of the best of the genre in the last few years. Novels from her Copper Cat Trilogy were nominated for British Fantasy Awards in 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively and she won the award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2018 and 2019 with the first two books from her Winnowing Flame Trilogy.

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Reading Jen Williams

As a writer, Williams is a contrast of contemporary and traditional. Her work invokes the escapist imagery of the late twentieth century greats, but with a modern sensibility that makes her stories readable, familiar and refreshingly new. There is a sense in her work that she is very aware of what readers from these stories. Her characters and creatures are carefully assembled, appealing to the classic themes of the genre, but unburdened by the baggage that might be associated with them.

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The themes and characters in her books create a social commentary in a subtle way, presenting views of fantasy society and individual characters that may contrast with the reader's view or the real-life society in which we live. In particular her characters are not all perfect young, good looking heroes; they are believable, with flaws and vices, as well as a range of ages and genders. She tends towards a large cast and complex plots rather than a single viewpoint character, but balances these well so the reader is not confused. 

 

Williams’ novels are vivid escapist experiences. Many are long, running to 500+ pages, but the action doesn’t slow, or become bogged down in exposition. Whilst her website bio regards this tendency for writing long fantasy as a curse, readers devour the detail and immersive stories.

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Williams is also prepared to experiment. Her most recent work,  Dog Rose Dirt (also known as A Dark and Secret Place in the US) is a step into another genre - crime thriller.

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When not writing, Jen works as a copywriter and in an independent bookshop.

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Jen's website with all her work  can be found here. She is also very active on Twitter - @sennydreadful
 

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