Louise Mumford was born and lives in south Wales. In her fifteen-year teaching career she tried to pass on her love of reading to her students (and discovered that the secret to successful teaching is… stickers! She is aware that that is, essentially, bribery.)
In the summer of 2019 Louise experienced a once-in-a-lifetime moment: she was discovered as a new writer by her publisher at the Primadonna Festival. Everything has been a bit of a whirlwind since then.
Louise lives in Cardiff with her husband and spends her time trying to get down on paper all the marvellous and thrilling things that happen in her head. Her debut book, Sleepless, a “frighteningly inventive” speculative thriller inspired by her own experience of insomnia, was published by HQ in December 2020. It has reached the overall Top 50 UK Kindle Chart and was the Karin Slaughter July 2021 Killer Read in UK Asda stores nationwide. It has been recently published in Canada. Her latest thriller, The Safe House, also a Kindle bestseller, was released in May 2022 and this has been followed by The Hotel which came out in June 2023 (paperback out in August).
Louise is Co-Chair of Crime Cymru, a co-operative of crime fiction writers with a connection to Wales and she is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association. She is part of the team who brought to Wales the first international in-person Crime Fiction Festival in Aberystwyth, April 2023, called Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival. As well as this, Louise has recently been one of only ten writers picked to be part of Hay Festival’s prestigious Writers At Work scheme 2023, a creative development programme for emerging Welsh talent.
