Cecily Blench is a freelance writer and editor. Originally from Herefordshire, she studied English Literature at the University of York and worked for several years at an independent publisher in London. Her first novel, The Long Journey Home, was published by Bonnier Zaffre in June 2021.

She is a lifelong Lord of the Rings nerd, loves Philip Pullman books, and enjoys dystopian fiction with a feminist and/or ecological angle. Alongside other projects, she is writing a novel about a doomed village by the sea.

If Cecily were stranded on a desert island, the two fantasy and/or science fiction novels she would want with her are Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro for its brilliant bleakness, and the Northern Lights trilogy by Philip Pullman, which she thinks are among the most perfect books she’s ever read.