Cathi Unsworth

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Cathi Unsworth is a novelist, writer and editor who lives and works in London. She began her career on the music weekly Sounds at the age of nineteen and has worked as a writer and editor for many other music, film and arts magazines since, including Bizarre, Melody Maker, Mojo and Uncut. She was the regular crime paperback reviewer for The Guardian between 2006-2012.

 

Her debut novel The Not Knowing was published in 2005, followed a year later by the Unsworth-edited short-story compendium London Noir, an A-Z of what lies beneath the official city maps. In 2007, Cathi’s second novel The Singer was released, followed by Bad Penny Blues (2010), Weirdo (2012), Without The Moon (2015) and That Old Black Magic (2018). She is one of the UK’s leading writers of noir fiction, her blending of pop culture, murder, history and even magic creating an atmospheric body of work that stirs up both excitement and dread.

 

As well as her writing, Cathi regularly takes part in live events, including literary talks at Bishopsgate Institute and for The Sohemian Society. She has worked with musicians including Pete Woodhead, Terry Edwards, The Cesarians, Paul A Murphy and Sophie Loyer in live and recorded situations, and co-wrote the punk memoir Defying Gravity with Jordan Mooney, published in 2019.