Cathy Brett is a writer and artist specialising in visual narrative. Cathy’s first career was in fashion forecasting and retail, but she didn’t begin writing fiction until she was well established in her second career, lecturing in Illustration & Design. Her debut teen novel, Ember Fury (Headline 2009), was heavy illustrated and was followed by Scarlett Dedd, Verity Fibbs and Everything Is Fine (and Other Lies I Tell Myself). Alongside her own books, Cathy illustrated numerous works by other YA and Middle Grade authors, including a successful collaboration with Jo Cotterill on the  Electrigirl series (Oxford University Press). She also began making comics.

Returning to study in 2015 she completed an MA in Illustration and Book Arts, exploring visual storytelling and ‘Framing the Visual Narrative’, so achieving a full emersion in comics and graphic novels. Her self-published comics have been shortlisted for the LDComics Prize and the First Graphic Novel Award (three times!) and her graphic novella Mary and Agnes, about Donald Trump’s mother as a Scottish teenager, featured in a BBC documentary, The President’s Mother (BBC ALBA, 2019).

Cathy specialises in writing psychological thrillers, ghost stories and history comics and has created strips and short stories for SCOOP magazine, The National Trust, Northumberland National Park, L&D Countryside Protection Society and Surrey’s oldest house, Rowhurst. She illustrated a hilarious piece by Gail Simone, ‘How to Destroy the Internet’, in the anthology Hey Amateur! (Black Crown, 2020).

Cathy is currently developing one of her shortlisted FNG Award comics for publication in autumn 2027.