We are thrilled to welcome Amy Jane Stewart to Blackwell’s to hear her discuss her debut novel, Hex House; a dark and unsettling story about a safe haven for women which transforms them into vessels of revenge. Amy will be in conversation with Heidi Hinda Chadwick, author of The Story of the Deer Woman.

About HEX HOUSE:

Elly is running. Pregnant and still in her wedding dress, she flees the cottage that her new husband, Ethan, has rented for their wedding night. Because he’s not what people think he is, and she knows that one day he’ll hurt her in a way she can’t fix.

Freezing and alone in the woods in the dead of night, she accepts that she’s going to die. But just as she has given up all hope, a house appears out of nowhere, and a woman beckons her in. Welcome to Hex House. A place that can only be found by those who truly need it. A place that teaches broken women how to access a power more beautiful and more horrifying than anything they could have imagined.

Edinburgh, present day: Siobhan’s life is in ruins. Once a promising documentary filmmaker, she has given up on her dream, and kept all the terrifying footage she has of Hex House hidden away.

She tries to erase all the horrors she witnessed with drugs and alcohol, and spends her time toying with a man in increasingly feral and dangerous ways. Her brother won’t speak to her, and she ignores the scar on her stomach that never fully heals.

But despite everything, always, she feels the presence of that place.And she knows, deep down, that she has to return.

About the authors:

Amy Jane Stewart is a writer living in the Scottish Borders. She was the winner of the New Writing North & Word Factory Northern Apprentice Award in 2021 and the Mairtín Crawford Prize for Short Story in 2022. She has been Highly Commended in the 2019 Bridport Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Bristol Short Story Prize. Her work can be found in New Writing Scotland, Visual Verse and Test Signal. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from York St John University and is studying for a Creative Writing PhD at the University of Sheffield. Hex House is her debut novel.

Heidi Hinda Chadwick is a writer, performer, and a Trauma-Informed Educator & Artist, based in Manchester. She writes short stories, novellas, and essays exploring the macabre, and the psychological intricacies of human experience, often drawing on folklore, psychology, body horror, femgore, twisting traditional fairytales and exploring contemporary anxieties.