Betsy Cornwell is a New York Times bestselling author. Born in the United States, she now lives in Ireland, where she teaches at the University of Galway, leads workshops at the Irish Writers Centre, and hosts writing retreats in Connemara. She has published six fantasy novels, which are fairytale-inspired; her first book Tides, released in 2013, is based on selkie folklore, and more recent books, such as her 2020 novel The Circus Rose, is a queer retelling of “Snow White and Rose Red”. Her most recent novel, the 2022 book Reader, I Murdered Him, is not a fairytale but is based on more recent literature: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
In 2025 Cornwell published her debut memoir, Ring of Salt. It details her marriage to an Irishman named Tommy and, as his behavior becomes more and more threatening, their subsequent separation and divorce, throughout which Cornwell must figure out how to protect their infant son Robin. The memoir addresses domestic violence, survivorship, single motherhood, and the process of rebuilding as Cornwell explores how she can give Robin the gentle childhood that neither she nor Tommy had. Part of the solution, in the end, is the refurbishing of a historic Connemara building called the Old Knitting Factory, which Cornwell is turning into an arts retreat space for single mothers and other marginalized single parents.
Cornwell is openly bisexual. She’s been out publicly for more than a decade. Her first book Tides was nominated for a Bisexual Book Award, and interviews with Cornwell as early as 2014 indicated her desire for increased bi representation in literature. More recently, in a 2025 Instagram post, Cornwell discussed how both Ring of Salt and the knitting factory project are “both hugely, holistically informed by the gifts my bisexuality and my queer communities have given me”. Though bisexuality and queerness are not the focus of her memoir, they are mentioned in it.
Cornwell received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame and her BA from Smith College.