Maggie O'Farrell, novelist

In the final episode of the third series (thank you for listening!), Maggie O'Farrell joins me from her home in Edinburgh. Maggie is the author of eight novels, including After You'd Gone, This Must Be The Place and Hamnet, which last year won the Women's Prize for Fiction. She also wrote the unsettling 2017 memoir I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. She describes the Victorian greenhouse-turned-studio where her books take shape, and talks about the difficulty of knowing where to begin; the laborious but valuable experience of getting her first novel published, and why she loves it when a manuscript veers off course.

You can find Maggie's books and those of other guests of the podcast here, along with a selection of books on writing that I've found helpful: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/in-writing