Francesca de Tores is a novelist and poet. She is the author of six novels, published in more than twenty languages. Her first historical novel, Saltblood, was awarded the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and was a Sunday Times top-20 bestseller. Her latest novel, Cast Away, tells the story of Alexander Selkirk, the 18th-century sailor whose extraordinary survival on a remote island was the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. Cast Away was ‘Book of the Month’ in The Times, was described by The Guardian as ‘a revelatory meditation on humanity,’ and by the Wall Street Journal as ‘a masterwork of creative fiction, […] one of the most beguiling survival stories ever written.’
Francesca’s four previous novels (published under the name Francesca Haig) range from dystopian fantasy to contemporary literary fiction. In addition to a collection of poems, Francesca’s poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies.
She grew up in lutruwita/Tasmania and, after fifteen years in England, is now living in naarm/Melbourne.