Novelist · Festival speaker

The town doesn’t empty all at once. It empties by whoever leaves next — and by who is left to notice.

Four novels set along a coastline where the fishing boats have mostly gone and the houses are mostly for sale. Written for the people who didn’t leave when everyone else did.

Written for & spoken at
The Aldermoor Review
Kestrel FM Arts
Brightwater Readers' Festival
The Quill & Lamp Weekly
Halvard Speakers Forum
Northgate Book Hour
The new novel

The Salt House

Everyone who could leave already has

When the co-op closes and the last boat is sold, most of the town packs up within a year. The Salt House follows three sisters who don’t — not from loyalty exactly, but because someone has to be the one who stays and notices what a place looks like while it is disappearing.

Set on the same stretch of coast as her three earlier novels.

Cover of The Salt House by Maeve Callister
A single speaker under a warm light on a festival stage, seen from the back of a full room
At festivals

A festival panel on place and memory, and a craft workshop for writers who want to write the coast properly.

Panel conversations about place, memory and the small towns that get emptied out from under people. Also available: a half-day workshop on writing landscape as character, not backdrop.

PanelsPlace & memoryWorkshopWriting the CoastShortlistedRegional prize (fictional)

Details fictional
“Novels about the people who stay when the town empties.”

From the jacket of The Salt House

Free chapter

Read chapter one, plus occasional notes from the coast.

One page about coastal towns and the people who don’t leave them. No courses, no funnel, unsubscribe in a click.

    Scroll to Top