Emylia Hall
Writing Coach
Emylia Hall is the award-winning author of four women’s fiction novels and a six-book cozy crime series. She is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.
Emylia Hall is the author of four women’s fiction novels and a six-book cozy crime series, The Shell House Detectives Mysteries.
Her writing career began in 2012 with The Book of Summers, a coming-of-age story inspired by childhood holidays. Published by Headline, it was one of the bestselling debuts of the year, a Richard and Judy Book Club selection, and went on to be voted the favorite read of the summer by readers. Three more novels followed: A Heart Bent Out of Shape (2013), The Sea Between Us (2015) and The Thousand Lights Hotel (2017), this last being a recent selection for Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place Book Club. Emylia’s work has been translated into ten languages and broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music.
In July 2023, The Shell House Detectives, the first in her popular crime series set on the Cornish coast, was published by Thomas & Mercer. It was a Kindle Top 10 bestseller and has been optioned for television by Playground Entertainment, the makers of Wolf Hall and All Creatures Great and Small. The Harbour Lights Mystery and The Rockpool Murder followed, with three more Shell House Detectives mysteries planned for 2024 and beyond. The series follows the exploits of sleuthing duo Ally and Jayden and the people in and around the fictional village of Porthpella. With books set in rural Hungary, the Swiss Riviera, the Tuscan isle of Elba, and Cornwall’s wild and wonderful west, Emylia’s work—whether women’s fiction or crime—is strongly influenced by place and matters of the heart.
Emylia has taught creative writing workshops in Kigali, Zurich, at the University of Lausanne, and as a regular tutor for Arvon. In 2018–20 she was a Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, based at the University of the West of England. She believes passionately in writing as a way of enriching life experience. If you’re writing reading group fiction, literary fiction or cozy crime and mystery, you’ll find Emylia an encouraging and caring tutor.
‘Exploring what it feels like to be somebody else, to live in different places, to make different choices; that’s why I write, and why I read, too. I guess I’m greedy—hungry for more lives than one—and insatiably curious.’