Edward Johns

Edward Johns is a Welsh writer based in South Wales. His fiction blends contemporary suspense, speculative ideas and sharply observed character work, often exploring memory, identity, grief, institutional power and the ways people resist being reduced to records, categories or processes.

His debut novel, The Names That We Keep, is a literary investigative thriller with a dark speculative edge, rooted in Swansea and the industrial, retail and civic spaces that shape everyday life. The novel reflects Edward’s interest in moral complexity, the language institutions use to justify their choices, and the importance of preserving the individual stories behind names.

His current projects include Hafn Lane, the first book in The Cities of Salt and Rain, a dual-reality series in which two versions of Swansea occupy the same ground and disagree over what should exist there, as well as further stories featuring investigator Laurence Morrow.

Alongside writing, Edward is a frontline worker in emergency ambulance services. That experience informs his interest in people under pressure, professional responsibility, ethical decision-making and the gap that can emerge between official systems and lived human experience.

His work is grounded in Wales, but concerned with questions that travel further: what we remember, what we owe one another, and what happens when care becomes detached from the people it was meant to serve.