The Other Woman

Biographer Joanne Drayton, and playwright and novelist Renée both left their husbands because they fell in love with a woman, explosive events that changed the trajectory of their lives and the stories they write. Author of the award-winning Hudson and Halls biography, and biographies of expatriate women painters like Frances Hodgkins, Joanne examines her own life for The Queen’s Wife. In her new crime novel Blood Matters Renée returns to the small town at the centre of The Wild Card, this time with a queer protagonist Puti Derrell, another murder and more family secrets. Renée and Joanne talk to Rebecca Hawkes about their books, their writing lives and what it means to put LGBTQIA+ at the centre of the work they do.