Author Bio

After a career in medicine and university teaching, Mark P. Henderson retired to North Derbyshire in 2002 and started to write fiction, edit manuscripts, teach creative writing, and collect and tell Peak District folktales. His publications, through five different publishing houses, comprise an anthology of short stories (Rope Trick, 2008), a novel (Perilaus, 2009), a children’s story (Fenella and the Magic Mirror, 2009), a study of the evolution of a local legend (Murders in the Winnats Pass, 2010), a collection of 62 traditional stories (Folktales of the Peak District, 2011), a collection of puns in verse and prose (Cruel and Unusual PunNishments, 2016), a one-act play (Forget it, it’s History, 2017), five more novels (National Cake Day in Ruritania, 2018; The Engklimastat, 2019; Perilaus II, 2021; Con, 2022; Black Harry, 2023), a novelette (The Definitive Biography of St Arborius of Glossopdale and his Thin Dog, 2019), and a novella (The Cat of Doom, 2020). His compilation of folktale films recorded in situ in collaboration with Tim Knebel of “Peak in the Past” and his colleagues (http://www.peakinthepast.co.uk; scroll down to “Folktales”), is available for free download and the set is due for completion in 2023. A second collection of Peak District folktales is currently in press, and he is working on a seventh novel.