Jessica Rydill

Who is Jessica Rydill?

Jessica Rydill is a British fantasy author from the West Country. She was born in 1959. She studied at King's College, Cambridge and the College of Law, working as a solicitor for 13 years. Her travels have provided some of the inspiration for her writing. She was a founder member of the Write Fantastic writers' group together with the Fantasy authors Sarah Ash, Chaz Brenchley, Mark Chadbourn Juliet E. McKenna, the late Deborah J. Miller, Stan Nicholls, Kari Sperring, Freda Warrington and Ian Whates.

Her interests include collecting Asian ball-jointed dolls, Richard III, Sasha dolls, myth, and East European music. Her short story My Brother Jonathan was short-listed for the Ian St James award in 1999 and she appears in The New Writer magazine Roll of Honour.

Her first novel, Children of the Shaman, was published by Orbit in 2001, and was short-listed for the Locus magazine best first novel in 2002. A sequel, The Glass Mountain, appeared in October 2002. A short story, The Anniversary, was published in an anthology printed by NewCon Press in 2010 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of The Write Fantastic.