Maggie O’Farrell is the author of Hamnet, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 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 2010 Costa Novel Award, Instructions for a Heatwave and This Must Be the Place. Her novel, The Marriage Portrait, was published in August 2022 and 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 has lived in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Hong Kong, London, and Italy; she currently lives in Edinburgh.

WHY THEY’RE JOINING US

Maggie O’Farrell excels in weaving unforgettable stories about characters who hover on the margins of history. Her bestselling, heartbreaking novel Hamnet tells the tale of Shakespeare’s son who died of the plague four years before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. In her latest book, The Marriage Portrait, O’Farrell brings to life Lucrezia De Medici who may or may not have been murdered by her husband. The historical record is scant, but as with Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell takes what facts exist and creates a rich, elegantly written story that lingers with you long after you close the book.