Visit from Author Tanya Landman: Crafting Thrillers, Gothic Tales, and Historical Truths

On Friday, 14th February, the author Tanya Landman spoke to Year 9 about her books and career. Tanya is the author of over forty books for children and young adults, including murder mysteries, historical fiction, and retellings of Gothic literature. In her talk, she spoke about her historical thrillers for young adults: Apache, Buffalo Soldier, and Hell or High Water.

The first two novels are about North American indigenous people in the late nineteenth century and centre young female protagonists—an Apache girl and (in Buffalo Soldier) a young African American girl who enlists in the U.S. army disguised as a boy after slavery is abolished. She has to fight the Apache and other North American indigenous peoples. Tanya explained how she was motivated to write about these stories after reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, which opened her eyes to the devastating impact of the American Frontier Wars on indigenous peoples in the American West in the late 19th century.

Tanya also spoke about her journey to becoming a writer, which included jobs as a children’s bookseller, an actress, and a PR manager for Bristol Zoo.

Creative Writing Workshop for Year 8

In her creative writing workshop for Year 8, Tanya shared techniques for writing a scary story. She talked about her retellings of Gothic literature—short versions of classics like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Frankenstein—and some of the elements from these stories that could be used to inspire terror or horror in the reader.

She challenged pupils to create suspense by incorporating uncanny details into an otherwise mundane scene. As an example of this, she cited one of her favourite childhood stories—Tom’s Midnight Garden—where the protagonist lies awake at night, unable to sleep, and hears the clock strike 13.