Connecting Conversations With Val McDermid

Crime Writer Val McDermid and Group Analyst Sue Einhorn explore the world of crime fiction where human taboos of murder, incest and violence are broken and the human struggle with mortality is violently exposed.

Award-winning crime writer Val McDermid is the founder and life force behind the Harrogate Crime Festival and is a powerful, fascinating presence in her own right. Val was born in Kirkcaldy, a small town in the heart of the Scottish mining community. She graduated in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford – the first from a Scottish state school to do so - before going on to be an award winning journalist for sixteen years. Her first novel was published in 1987. Today she is a Number One bestseller, translated into more than 30 languages, with over two million copies sold in the UK and over 10 million worldwide. She has written 26 bestselling novels. Cross and Burn – her latest novel - is her 27th.

Sue Einhorn is a Group Analyst and an individual psychotherapist who practises in the UK and trains and supervises internationally from Russia to Norway. She moved into psychotherapy over twenty five years ago following many years as a youth worker, community development activist and lecturer. She is particularly interested in how the social context lives in our unconscious and how each person then shapes the social world around them.