Maggie O’Farrell is the author of nine novels. Her debut, After You’d Gone, was published 25 years ago this year and won the Betty Trask Prize in 2001. Her 2010 book The Hand That First Held Mine won the Costa Novel Award; and Hamnet, her hugely acclaimed and bestselling story of the death of Shakespeare’s son, won the 2020 Women’s Prize for fiction. Maggie O’Farrell has also written a memoir; I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death.

Maggie tells John Wilson about some of her creative influences including the Finnish writer Tove Jansson, whose book Moominland Midwinter she first read at the age of eight when she was ill in bed, suffering from encephalitis. The poet Michael Donaghy gave Maggie valuable writing advice when she attended his poetry workshops at City University and inspired her with his recitations of poetry from memory. Maggie also reveals how seeing a David Hockney photomontages called The Scrabble Game hugely influenced the way she constructs narrative and time-frame in her novels.

Producer: Edwina Pitman