James Smythe

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James Smythe is the author of the Wales Book Of The Year Fiction Award winner The Testimony (2012) and several more novels for adults. The Way Down Dark, the beginning of the Australia trilogy, is Smythe's first novel for younger readers. He has been shortlisted for and won many prizes, including The Kitschies Red Tentacles and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He currently writes a continuing series of articles for The Guardian called 'Rereading Stephen King' and teaches Creative Writing in London.

Author's Comment: I’m obsessed with memory and how it works. We’re constantly lying to ourselves; nothing is as we remember it. Not even slightly. Everything is filtered, and yet we talk about memories as definites. “Don’t you remember when...” is one of the most dangerous phrases in the world, because it distorts other people’s memories of an event; a story changes how you think about yourself, even. It’s letting somebody else’s ideas through the filter. And photographs are all lies, because they’re posed, and yet that’s how we choose to commemorate something.

Nationality: British