Anna Bailey: Every Book Is Going To Come About Differently

Anna Bailey is a Sunday Times bestselling author from Gloucestershire. Their debut novel, Where the Truth Lies, inspired by their experiences living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, was nominated for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year and Goldsboro Glass Bell awards, as well as the Prix Nouvelles Voix du Polar. Their short stories, based on their travels through rural America, have been dramatised for BBC Radio 4, including “Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water,” which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They live in Bordeaux with their wife. Follow them on Instagram.

In this interview, Anna discusses how living in East Texas helped inspire their new gothic thriller, Our Last Wild Days, their advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Anna Bailey
Literary agent: Alice Lutyens at Curtis Brown (U.K.)
Book title: Our Last Wild Days
Publisher: Atria (Simon & Schuster)
Release date: May 20, 2025
Genre/category: Southern gothic, thriller
Previous titles: Where the Truth Lies (originally published as Tall Bones in the U.K.)
Elevator pitch: A journalist returns to her hometown in rural Louisiana to investigate the death of her childhood friend, and finds herself drawn into a world of biker gangs, faith healers and alligator hunters as she searches for the truth.

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I’ve always been a fan of Southern Gothic fiction. I’m from the U.K., but I grew up reading Carson McCullers and Harper Lee, and there was something about that hazy, languid, sinister world that really burrowed its way into me. Eventually, through various twists of fate, I found myself living in the South, in East Texas, and, of course, it proved to be a far more complex place than the version of it that had existed in my head for so long. I have a complicated relationship with those years in Texas, but there’s a lot of love there too. I got to explore a good deal of the Southern U.S., and it remains one of the most beautiful parts of the world I’ve ever seen—so when it came to writing this novel, I knew I wanted to set it in the South, in all its dreamy, vicious glory.

I wrote what would become Our Last Wild Days in about two months during the summer in 2023, and I actually meant for it to be my third novel. I was waiting for feedback on a separate manuscript at the time, but it turned out my publishers preferred this one, which was great for me, because I definitely preferred working on Our Last Wild Days. The idea stayed pretty much the same from first draft to finish; the only major change, I think, was removing one of the main characters. The story is told from multiple viewpoints, offering different perspectives on this one event—the death of this young alligator hunter—but initially there were quite a lot of POV characters, and in the end, blending some of those storylines into one character’s narrative arc made the whole novel flow a lot more seamlessly.

It was just a really great experience to publish outside of the pandemic. Because I’m based in France now, everything has always been very online with my U.S. publishers, and I’m so grateful for how much work they do for me publicity-wise without my actually being there; but this time it feels like there’s just been a greater sense of joy in putting a book out into the world when we know readers can actually go and buy it in person, or knowing that book clubs can get together and discuss it face to face.

My biggest takeaway has been accepting that every book is going to come about differently. Writing my first novel involved lots of handwritten notes and physically arranging plot beats on a board. When I tried to approach my second novel the same way, I kept getting blocked. It turned out to be much easier writing huge chunks of Our Last Wild Days on my phone, which felt a bit like cheating because it seemed less hands-on compared to how I’d done it before, but in a way, this also took some of the pressure off, and the writing started to come more naturally.

I’m really interested in deconstructing myths about American manhood; I like looking at roles that have traditionally been seen as “men’s jobs” and considering how characters who don’t fit that mould would interact with that profession. In southern Louisiana—in fact, all along the Gulf Coast—alligator hunting is this deeply macho occupation. So, I was interested in exploring what it would be like for a woman to do this job, or somebody queer, or just someone who doesn’t fit that stereotype, and I think that’s something I would like readers to take away from this book—that this part of the world a lot more diverse than the stereotypes would have us believe.

It’s important to get a change of scenery once in a while. I don’t mean travelling, necessarily, although that helps too. All through the pandemic, I really struggled to write, closed off in my flat like that, but in 2023, I started writing at my local café instead, and it’s made a huge difference. I think a lot of us got sick of our homes feeling like our offices during COVID, so I feel like it’s a way of tricking your brain into believing you’re not actually at work. And, of course, it’s a lot easier to write about the world when you actually get to be in it.