‘The question of why’: Our human love for crime fiction

Ahead of the launch of the Sainsbury Centre’s 2025 season, Can We Stop Killing Each Other?, PR and media officer Kate Wolstenholme, sat down with Tom Benn and Dr Nathan Ashman, founders of Noirwich.

The duo established Noirwich in 2014, a crime writing festival held in Norwich which explores, interrogates and promotes progressive and inclusive crime writing, in person and online. This year, Nigerian-British novelist and writer Oyinkan Braithwaite and global selling thriller writer Lee Child speak in a special event hosted at the Sainsbury Centre.

The Sainsbury Centre’s autumn season of five exhibitions wrestles with one of the darkest and deadliest aspects of humanity, exploring the fundamental questions of why humans are led to kill and the culture that wrestles with this notion such as in art, film, TV and theatre.

This interview discusses the nature and history of crime literature, and why we, as humans, are so fascinated with consuming it.

Tom Benn is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and Associate Professor in Crime Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA). His first novel, The Doll Princess (Cape), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Portico Prize, and longlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger.

Dr Nathan Ashman is Lecturer in Crime Writing at the UEA. He teaches on the MA in Crime Fiction and is the convenor of the undergraduate module ‘The Art of Murder’.

Interviewer: Kate Wolstenholme

Filming: Bea Prutton

Editing: Kate Wolstenholme