Cathi Unsworth

Cathi Unsworth (born 11 June 1968) is an English writer and music journalist. She has written for magazines including Melody Maker, Dazed & Confused and Bizarre, and has released several novels.

Unsworth was born on 11 June 1968. She studied at the London College of Fashion and was headhunted by Melody Maker. After working for other magazines, including Purr, Sounds and Bizarre, she began writing novels. Her writing is heavily influenced by the late Derek Raymond.

Her novels first novels were released by Serpent's Tail. These were an expose of the psychopaths of the London media world titled The Not Knowing, in 2005, and The Singer, about the punk music industry, in 2007. She also edited its London Noir anthology in 2006. Unsworth's 2009 novel Bad Penny Blues was a historical novel following the murders of London prostitutes between 1959-1965 by a killer dubbed "Jack The Stripper" by the media, which remain unsolved.

Unsworth published seaside noir novel Weirdo, about the horrors of teenage friendship, in 2012, followed by Without the Moon in 2015. Her book Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth published in 2023, is about the music genre and the subculture that grew out of it. Mojo's Victoria Segal praised it, saying, it was a "superb history of the dark and all its risings" and adding that "it's as monumental as its subject, a real temple of love".

Unsworth has also contributed the short story Sheena Is A Punk Rocker to the anthology Punk Fiction which was sold to fundraise for the Teenage Cancer Charity Trust.