Offcumden

Superb - a rare and wildly imaginative, epic treat of a debut. A masterpiece of literary folk horror, and a future classic, for sure.’ – LUCIE McKNIGHT HARDY, author of Water Shall Refuse Them
Offcumden is a lyrical, haunting, heady coming of age story as well as a stirring defense of the outsider and a condemnation of the continuing madness of misogyny and bigotry. An impressive, inventive, atmospheric, and creepy as hell debut. – PAUL TREMBLAY, New York Times bestselling author of A Head Full of Ghosts
Johnny Gaunt uses the Yorkshire landscape and dialect to perfectly fuse the everyday with the uncanny. Three young protagonists journey into a hidden nightmarish world to save a sister lost to repulsive evil, a journey oozing with skin-prickling dread and twists. By the time the secrets and horrors of the past are revealed, I could barely breathe – a gut-punch of a payoff. OFFCUMDEN is genuinely frightening tale undercut by a moving evocation of outsider friendship. A staggering debut. – FRANCES CRAWFORD, acclaimed author of A Bad, Bad Place
An outstanding debut - vivid, unsettling and affecting, with incredible prose and scenes of genuine terror that haunted my dreams. If Stephen King had been born on a council estate in Yorkshire, he might well have written something like Offcumden! – GARETH BROWN, bestselling author of The Book of Doors
Johnny Gaunt writes with an extraordinary feel for verbal texture, rhythm and the look and feel of words on the page. Offcumden is dark, macabre, sensory and strange; gothic and dreamlike, yet utterly its own. It takes risks, refuses easy answers and is full of the kind of gorgeous, unsettling detail that stays with you. Johnny has a genuinely unique voice. Readers need to read him. – RAY ROBINSON, award-winning author of The Mating Habits of Stags

Johnny Gaunt was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. His past occupations have included scrapyard worker, roofer, night-shift garage attendant, door-to-door salesman, call-centre operative, and member of a railway gang. He now works within the NHS. He has a degree in English Literature and Philosophy from the University of Sheffield and a MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. Offcumden is his first novel, and won The Literary Consultancy PEN Factor Prize in 2022. He has lived in London, Wales and the Channel Islands, but now resides in Western Scotland with his wife and two daughters.

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