Five Fun Facts - Hermione Laake


In the 1980s Hermione worked as a waitress with Simon Fuller in The Larks restaurant in Surbiton. Before this job, Hermione had already held three jobs, one of them running her own gardening business. She dated the son of the restauranteurs, and they went to dinner with Simon Fuller and an early protege for his new band, which became The Spice Girls. The early recruits for Simon’s first girl band were from Hermione’s school, Bonner Hill School for Girls in Kingston-upon-Thames.

Hermione Laake’s first book was a picture book for children called DERBOLD THE WASP. She wrote and illustrated the book and gave it to friends and family as a Christmas present in 1984 when she was just 18 years old. Laake is currently working on the illustrations for 3 picture books.

Hermione Laake’s debut novella is a literary sequel to Jane Eyre entitled:BERTHA’S JOURNAL: A PERFECT IMMELMAN (sic) TURN. The school featured in the book is based on her old school Bonner Hill School for Girls, which has since been knocked down. Bertha’s Journal: A Perfect Immelman Turn was jointly published with SBPRA in 2012 when Hermione was 46 years old. Hermione wrote the book whilst an undergraduate at Winchester.

Hermione Laake achieved a lifetime ambition of gaining her degree in English Literature in 2012 after working at it for five years part-time whilst raising a family of five. Hermione gained a 2:1, despite being graded a D for English Language and English Literature at O Level aged 15 years. In 2013, Hermione retook her English GCSE and gained a grade A. Hermione Laake is sharing this as proof of latent ability in everyone and offers this up as encouragement to anyone who has a genuine love of something to persist at it until you succeed.

Hermione is now a published awards-nominated author and associate editor for content for OPEN:Journal of Arts and Letters, USA.




Hermione Laake is an awards-nominated writer, also writing as Wilds. Laake is associate editor for content with OPEN:Journal of Arts & Letters. Laake was chair and secretary for competitions for Hampshire Writers Society 2012-2013. Laake has an MA in creative writing with distinction from KU, and a BA (Hons) from Winchester. Laake wrote her first two children’s books aged 18 years, DERBOLD THE WASP (a picture book), and WOEDY BEAR, a novel. Woedy Bear is published as an ebook on Kindle. Laake’s award-nominated chapter book MY FRIEND ALIEN is available as an ebook on Kindle and as a comic style chapter book without illustrations on Amazon. You can follow Hermione Laake on Goodreads and you can listen to her interpretations as reader-in-performance here and on Twitter


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