FORMER Gazette journalist Liz Trenow is making her debut at the Essex Book Festival.

Her first novel, The Last Telegram has already been a smash hit locally and was nominated in this year’s Romantic Writers’ competition.

The book tells the story of Lily Verner, who becomes an apprentice at her family’s silk weaving factory as the Nazis storm Europe.

There she meets Stefan, a German Jewish refugee, who works on the looms.

Inspired by Liz’s family’s own business in Sudbury, the character of Stefan also has a foot in reality – that of a German boy who came to the factory during the war.

Liz, who lives in Colchester, explains: “The family had become increasingly concerned about the plight of their many Jewish friends and business colleagues in Europe.

“It prompted them to sponsor five German boys to travel to England and work at the mill.

“One of them fell in love with a local girl. After internment in Australia and then fighting for the Allies in North Africa, he returned to work at the mill, married and lived a long and happy life with his family.”

As Liz Curry, the author is perhaps better known locally for her work as a journalist working for the BBC, the Gazette and the Essex County Standard, among others.

She started her career as a secretary for the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, in London, and something must have sunk in, because now Liz has a book deal of her own, with Harper Collins, one of the country’s top publishing houses.

She had to complete the novel to get her MA and after three years of re-writing her perseverance paid off after she got picked up by literary agent Christopher Little, the man who discovered JK Rowling.

She adds: “Christopher sponsors a prize on the MA course. It’s judged on the first 30,000 words of our novels, and I won it.”

Liz is currently writing my second book which is based on Severalls Hospital in Colchester

Liz Trenow
Braintree Library
Fairfield Road,
Braintree.
Wednesday, March 27 7.30pm
£5, £4 concessions
01206 573948
www.essexbookfestival.org