Five Minutes With: Course Director and Author Cathy Hayward

Cathy’s second novel The Last Daughter of Highdown Hall came out on 1 May 2026. An alumna of the Creative Writing Programme, as well as the course director since 2023, here she talks about her writing routine and the inspiration behind the novel. 

Congratulations on The Last Daughter of Highdown Hall! Tell us about it. It’s a story about the relationship between mothers and daughters, about the veracity of childhood memories and about grief and regret. I initially set the novel on a train with four estranged sisters travelling to scatter their mother’s ashes in Scotland. My editor said she loved the story but didn’t like the train (!) so I had to rewrite 60,000 words. But of course she was right, and the novel is set in a crumbling Sussex manor house which becomes a character in its own right. 

What was the inspiration behind the story? My eldest daughter was reading the blurb on the back the other day and said ‘it’s another story about you and Granny’. My debut was very much based on my relationship with my mother but I didn’t think this one was. But then she pointed out that my mother had cut me out of her will, just as happens in the book, and it was all about dealing with family secrets unearthed after someone dies. But it’s also inspired by being the mother to teenage girls and all the joy and challenge that can bring; and by animal rights activisim which I was interested in as a teenager. 

How long did it take you to write? I wrote it in fits and starts over about nine months, around my day jobs. In addition to running the Creative Writing Programme with Sophie, I also own Kemptown Bookshop and work in a PR agency a few hours a week so it can be hard for writing to take priority. I like writing in the early morning when there are fewer distractions and regularly get up at 5am to write as the sun comes up. I workshopped the book in Laura Wilkinson’s Advanced Writers Workshops last year and that feedback was incredibly useful, especially because there was a former police officer in the group who helped me with some of the factual elements. 

As well as being the course director, you’re also an alumna of the Creative Writing Programme. Why did you decide to take the course back in 2015? I’d always loved writing and had started several novels over the years but had always run out of steam as work and family pressures took over. I turned 40 in 2015 and felt it was now or never. I didn’t want to look back with regret and think that I could have achieved something if only I’d committed to it. I found The Creative Writing Programme and it was exactly what I needed to give me the skills, support, and discipline to start prioritising my writing. 

What was your experience of the course? I had a rocky start. My father died just a few weeks before it began, and then, six months in, my mother died. But I found writing allowed me to start to process those seismic shifts in my life. Looking back, I used writing as a form of therapy to help me through those difficult months.  The course itself was brilliant – I was very nervous at the beginning but we were gently supported through those first few exercises and the initial fear of sharing our work. And it all very quickly became much easier. Everyone on the course was very supportive of one another. 

By the end of the course, had you completed a major piece of work? Some time in the second year, I realised that what I was writing wasn’t separate pieces of work but all part of a greater whole – what became my debut novel The Girl in the Maze about the experience of mothering and being mothered. By the end of the course, I’d written about half of that book and I continued with it over the next few years. Much of what I wrote in the course made it into the final version so it was very much time well spent. 

Tell us how you secured a publishing deal. On the advice of Rosie Chard, my CWP tutor, I entered the first three chapters of my manuscript into a competition, which I went on to win. The prize was a meeting with an agent and a publisher, and I was offered a publishing deal at that meeting - an amazing moment. Six months after that book came out, my small publisher decided to close and the rights reverted back to me. But I was lucky enough to have an agent by then and she went on to secure me a three-book deal with Lake Union. A reworked version of my debut The Girl in the Midnight Maze came out in November 2024; and my third book in that contract comes out in July. 

 What are you writing at the moment? I’m about 25,000 words in to a novel about munchausen by proxy, but typically have also just come up with the idea for a fifth book which I’m much more excited about the prospect of writing. I hope to finish at least one by the end of the year.

What advice would you give to people starting out in their writing careers? Hard work really does pay off. Dedication and discipline beat brilliance and giftedness every day of the week. Carve out whatever spare time you have to write and stick with it. I know I’m not the most gifted writer ever, but I am disciplined when it comes to my writing. Keep the characters in your head even when youre not writing and jot down whatever thoughts you have about them. That way you’ll have something to work with when you get back to the page. 

The Last Daughter of Highdown Hall is out on 1 May 2026 with Lake Union. You can order a signed copy here or download on Kindle or Audible.