financial times After the prestigious literary prize-winning author was revealed to be a serial con artist who left a plethora of lies and manipulations in her wake.
“Carrie Jade Williams” is the popular name for this person who won the 2020 Bodley Head/FT Literary Award. The essay, she claimed, was written using assistive technology.
However, on December 9th, Vise It is revealed that “Carrie Jade Williams” is actually a convicted con artist whose real name is Samantha Cooks. Cooks has eluded Irish law enforcement for the past decade, regularly changing her name and moving towns.
This essay FTWebsite of December 7but by December 9thAccording to the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine, it had been deleted.
spokesperson for FT “Based on the information that has come to light, we have decided to remove the essay from our website.”
They continue: The 2020 essays were read and judged on their honesty and literary merit. We have both reached out to the author to address the allegations made in the article, but have not received a response. Withdrawn, Bodley Head makes the ebook unavailable. ”
many literary site We have also quietly removed all references to “Carrie Jade Williams” from the page.
But Bodley Head’s parent company Penguin Publishing’s website still has her profile, and a link to her winning essay directs readers to Amazon, where it can still be downloaded. increase.
Under her alias, Cooks painted a picture of a brave woman who was adopted from a matriarchal family in Ireland and lived with Huntington’s disease.
her relatives explained Vise She was not adopted and had no family history of Huntington’s disease. It was first raised online after posting. She claimed she was upset that she had an assistive device in her home. She then said she would need extensive treatment due to items in her home.
The Independent’s Indy100 site originally had two articles about the “Williams” Airbnb story, one of which has since been removed.
according to ViseThe publication spent two months investigating the allegations, interviewing women who trusted Cooks to care for her children and gave her large sums of money. She has operated under several pseudonyms and women have expressed concern that she may be on the run. Contact was made, but no significant effort was ever made to track her down.
The lack of action shown by the police angered many.according to ViseCook’s former friend Julie Lee said that when she contacted police in 2017 to report that she was posing as a therapist, they had a “thick file” of Cook and accused her of being aggressive. Despite this and corresponding reports from the local principal, Cooks left town in August 2017 and was able to virtually disappear.
these days, Vise New Scientist feature editor Abby Beall reached out to her last year, and “Williams” reached out to her in an attempt to pitch a story about the groundbreaking brain surgery she was supposedly due to undergo. Biel said he stopped talking after asking her a few questions and then “realizing it didn’t make sense.”
