Hazel Gaynor (born 16 May 1971) is an English author of historical fiction and fantasy based in Ireland.

Early and personal life

Gaynor is from

Driffield Driffield, also known as Great Driffield, is a market town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The civil parish is formed by the town of Driffield and the village of Little Driffield. By road, it is north-east of Leeds ...

East Riding of Yorkshire The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...

. She graduated in 1993 with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in Business Studies from

Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...

. She and her sister lost their mother in 1995. She lived in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in the 1990s. She moved to Ireland in 2001 after meeting her now husband through a mutual friend in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

. They settled in

Kilcullen Kilcullen (), formally Kilcullen Bridge, is a small town on the River Liffey in County Kildare, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Its population of 3,473 at the 2011 census made it the 12th largest settlement in County Kildare and the fastest growi ...

County Kildare County Kildare ( ga, Contae Chill Dara) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the Eastern and Midland Region. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county, ...

in 2004 where they have raised their two sons.

Career

Gaynor began her career in professional services. After the

2008 recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At t ...

left her redundant from her job as a learning and development executive at the Irish law firm A&L Goodbody, she decided to pursue her passion of writing. She ran a personal blog titled ''Hot Cross Mum'', which became an e-book in 2011. She contributed to and interviewed authors such as

Philippa Gregory Philippa Gregory (born 9 January 1954) is an English historical novelist who has been publishing since 1987. The best known of her works is ''The Other Boleyn Girl'' (2001), which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Roman ...

for the likes of '' Writing.ie''. Gaynor self-published her debut fiction novel ''The Girl Who Came Home'', based on the true story of 14 Irish emigrants on the

Titanic RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United ...

, on Kindle in 2012. She received the Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award at Kildare Readers' Festival that year. In 2013, she landed her first publishing deal with

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

under the William Morrow imprint, who re-published the novel in print in 2014. It became a ''New York Times'' and ''USA Today'' bestseller and was named the Romantic Novelists' Association Historical Novel of the Year. She signed with a New York agent. Her second novel ''A Memory of Violets'', originally titled ''Daughters of the Flowers'', was published in February 2015. The character of Albert Shaw is based on John Grooms. It appeared in

WHSmith WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and m ...

's spring selection. This was followed by ''The Girl from the Savoy'' on London's

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...

in June 2016, a ''

Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' and ''

Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'' best seller shortlisted for the

Irish Book Awards The Irish Book Awards are Irish literary awards given annually to books and authors in various categories. In 2018 An Post took over sponsorship of the awards from Bord Gais Energy. It is the only literary award supported by all-Irish bookstores. ...

. In August 2017, Gaynor published her first fantasy novel '' The Cottingley Secret'', a fictionalisation of the Cottingley fairies story from 1917 Yorkshire. Gaynor's October 2018 novel ''The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter'' was a ''USA Today'' and ''Irish Times'' bestseller. Shortlisted for a Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award, the story of

Grace Darling Grace Horsley Darling (24 November 1815 – 20 October 1842) was an English lighthouse keeper's daughter. Her participation in the rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked ''Forfarshire'' in 1838 brought her national fame. The paddlesteamer ...

had fascinated Gaynor from a young age. Her 2020 book, set at a boarding school in 1941 China, was published under the name ''The Bird in the Bamboo Cave'' in August in some countries and ''When We Were Young & Brave'' elsewhere in October.

Collaborations

In 2016, Gaynor wrote a short story for the collection ''Fall of Poppies''. Gaynor has collaborated with American author Heather Webb on ''Last Christmas in Paris'' (2017), ''Meet Me in Monaco'' (2019) featuring

Grace Kelly Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after starring in several significant films in the early to mid-1950s, became Princess of Monaco by marrying Prince Rainier III in April 1956. Kelly ...

, and ''Three Words for Goodbye'' (2021) (co-written over the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

lockdown). The former won the 2018 Women's Fiction Writers Association STAR Award in the General Category. The latter was one of

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...

's July picks. Gaynor runs the Inspiration Project, which conducts workshops for aspiring writers, with Catherine Ryan Howard and Carmel Harrington.

Bibliography

Fiction

*''The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic'' (2012) *''A Memory of Violets: A Novel of London's Flower Sellers'' (2015) *''The Girl from the Savoy'' (2016) *'' The Cottingley Secret'' (2017) *''Last Christmas in Paris: A Novel of World War I'' (2017), co-written with Heather Webb *''The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter'' (2018) *''Meet Me in Monaco'' (2019), co-written with Heather Webb *''The Bird in the Bamboo Cave'' / ''When We Were Young & Brave'' (2020) *''Three Words for Goodbye'' (2021), co-written with Heather Webb

Short stories

*"Hush" in ''Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War'' (2016)

Nonfiction

*''Hot Cross Mum: Bitesize Slices of Motherhood'' (2011)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaynor, Hazel Living people 1971 births 21st-century English women writers Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University English bloggers English emigrants to Ireland English fantasy writers English historical novelists English women novelists People from Driffield Women historical novelists Writers from Yorkshire