Meet the author

Sophie Kirtley.

Writer · United Kingdom

Sophie Kirtley: writes wild, tender adventures for 9-12s — time-slips, ghost stories and Irish myth that hold grief and courage with equal care.

Sophie Kirtley grew up in Northern Ireland and now writes adventurous, emotionally resonant novels for older children about family, friendship and the natural world. Her debut, The Wild Way Home, is a prehistoric time-slip in which a boy, reeling from the news that his longed-for baby brother is seriously ill, flees into a forest that has become the Stone Age. Its companion, The Way to Impossible Island, follows two children divided by thousands of years but united by courage. She has since written the spine-tingling Irish ghost story The Haunting of Fortune Farm and Swanfall, a wintry adventure steeped in the myth of the Children of Lir. Kirtley's books handle grief and fear with real tenderness, wrapping big feelings in wild landscapes and old stories.