Dr Caroline Cauchi, is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Hull and an international bestselling author. She is passionate about researching silenced voices and on the wider questions of ways in which women involved in creative pursuits have disappeared from historical narratives.
Caroline also examines how they are being reimagined in contemporary creative practice. She is especially interested in a novelist’s ethical and moral responsibilities when fictionalising a real life.
Caroline’s historical novel, ‘Mrs Van Gogh’, was published in 2023, and has been a bestseller in several territories. It examines how following Vincent van Gogh’s death in 1890 – penniless and unknown – 11 years later his work is exhibited in Paris and his unparalleled talent finally recognised. The tireless efforts of one woman gave the world one of its greatest creative minds. However, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent’s sister-in-law and the keeper of his immense collection of paintings, sketches and letters, had been written out of history.
‘The Woman Who Went Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel’ is Caroline’s follow-up, published in 2024 and inspired by the life of Annie Edson Taylor - the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, over a decade before any male daredevil dared to do the same.
Niagara Falls image: shankar s. from Dubai, united arab emirates, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons