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A book cover featuring an image of a house standing alone in a green field with a red sky above and the title The Shadow House in large white letters in the sky.

Anna Downes

Anna Downes is an actor-turned-writer, born in the UK and now based on the NSW Central Coast. Her third novel, Red River Road, is due to be published in 2024. 

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A photograph of a smiling white woman with long wavy blonde hair and a white shirt

Anna Downes

Anna Downes grew up in Sheffield, UK. She studied drama at the University of Manchester before winning a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and moving to London to pursue an acting career that included credits in EastEnders, Casualty and Dalziel and Pascoe, as well as a long-running stage production of The Dresser in London’s West End. She moved to Australia in 2011 and started writing a few years later just after her second child was born.

Anna’s internationally bestselling debut novel, The Safe Place, was published simultaneously in Australia, the US and the UK in 2020 and was shortlisted for the 2021 Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards. Her second book, The Shadow House, was published in 2021 in Australia and New Zealand followed by publication in the UK and the USA in 2022. Both have been translated into over ten different languages. Anna has written for the Sydney Morning Herald, Sunday Life Magazine and CrimeReads, and has performed as a narrator on three audiobooks. She lives on the NSW Central Coast with her husband and two children, and her third novel, Red River Road, will be published in June 2024.

Festival Events

Newcastle Writers Festival would like to acknowledge the Awabakal and Worimi peoples, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the festival takes place, and recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and extend this respect to all First Nations people attending our festival.

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