To mark World Book Day, and as part of our Women of Influence Series, we were joined in assembly this morning by debut author Lizzy Barber.

Lizzy opened by telling us a story about a mystery phone call.

One day, while at her office job, Lizzy received a call from a number she didn’t recognise; on answering she discovered it was Luigi of LBA. But who was this Luigi? And what was LBA? She soon discovered that Luigi was a literary agent and that she had won the Daily Mail and Random House first novel competition – a competition she wouldn’t have entered had it not been for the wise words of her mother “You’ve got nothing to loose”. As a competition winner, Lizzy now had a literary agent – the aforementioned Luigi – a £20,000 advance on her novel, and guaranteed publication with Penguin Random House UK. After working with the team at LBA, Lizzy’s book My Name is Anna, a thriller about a missing child and the impact of their disappearance on their family, was published in January 2019.

After engaging us with her story, Lizzy answered some questions from Charlotte-Rose and the floor. She told us about the editing process, and how she discovered it was important to fight your battles when decisions were being made about what should be cut or altered. She talked about finding inspiration from the news and doing research into missing children cases. And she also shared about how every writer has a draw of unfinished manuscripts, observing that sometimes you have to be willing to let something go when its not working and find a new story.

We were all inspired by Lizzy’s talk and want to thank her for visiting FHS today.