About

Charles Fernyhough is a writer, scientist, musician and broadcaster. His non-fiction book about his daughter’s psychological development, The Baby in the Mirror, was published by Granta in 2008. His book on autobiographical memory, Pieces of Light (Profile, 2012) was shortlisted for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. His latest non-fiction book, The Voices Within, is published by Profile/Wellcome Collection in the UK and by Basic Books (2016) in the US. He is the editor of Others (Unbound, 2019), an anthology exploring how books and literature can show us other points of view, with net profits supporting refugee and anti-hate charities.

Charles is the author of two novels, The Auctioneer (Fourth Estate, 1999) and A Box of Birds (Unbound, 2013). His fiction has been published in several anthologies including New Writing 11 and New Writing 14. His books have been translated into thirteen languages.

Charles has written for Scientific American, LA Times, TIME Ideas, Nature, New Scientist, BBC Focus, Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Literary Review, Sunday Telegraph, Lancet, Scotland on Sunday, Huffington Post, Daily Beast and Sydney Morning Herald. He blogs for the US magazine Psychology Today. He has appeared on BBC2’s Horizon and has made numerous radio appearances in the UK and US, including BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week, Woman’s Hour, All in the Mind and The Digital Human and BBC World Service’s The Forum. He has acted as consultant on theatre productions on Broadway and the West End (‘The River’, Royal Court, 2012, and The Circle in the Square, 2014; ‘Old Times’, Harold Pinter Theatre, 2013; ‘The Birthday Party’, Harold Pinter Theatre, 2018), numerous TV (BBC1 and Channel 4) and radio documentaries and several other artistic projects.

Charles is a part-time Professor of Psychology at Durham University, where he leads the interdisciplinary Hearing the Voice project, investigating the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations. He has published more than 125 peer-reviewed journal articles on topics such as inner speech, memory and child development. In 2019 he was a Derek Brewer Visiting Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Charles is represented by David Grossman Literary Agency Ltd., 9 Lamington Street, London W6 0HU. Tel: +44 (0) 208 741 2860. To contact Charles, send an email here.