Meet the author

Nicola Penfold.

Writer · United Kingdom

Nicola Penfold: a writer of atmospheric, big-hearted eco-adventures for 9–12s, where rewilded landscapes and real peril carry a hopeful green heart.

Nicola Penfold is a British children's author who writes atmospheric, emotionally rich eco-fiction for readers of nine and up. Born in Merseyside and now living in North London, she studied English at Cambridge before finding her way into writing. Her debut, Where the World Turns Wild (2020), imagines a walled city that has outlawed nature since a man-made plague, and follows two siblings who flee into the rewilded wilderness beyond; its 2024 sequel, When the Wild Calls, deepens the story in dual voices. Standalones Between Sea and Sky and Beyond the Frozen Horizon carry the same green heart, setting gripping survival adventures on a flooded oyster farm and in the melting Arctic. Penfold pairs real peril with tenderness and hope, writing books that ask what we lose when we shut ourselves away from the living world.