Maggie O’Farrell is the author of Hamnet, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include After You’d Gone, My Lover’s Lover, The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand that First Held Mine, which won the Costa Novel Award, Instructions for a Heatwave, This Must be the Place and The Marriage Portrait, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She is also the author of two books for children, Where Snow Angels Go and The Boy Who Lost His Spark. She lives in Edinburgh.
I would never not read. I’d feel like a musician who never listens to music; it would just be wrong. And actually – especially when you are at a certain stage in your book – it’s such a relief to sink into somebody else’s world and just receive their wisdom and receive their words and their artistry. I like to read lots of new books to see what other writers are coming up with.
Maggie O' Farrell
