Maggie O'Farrell

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Maggie O'Farrell

FRSL
Maggie O'Farrell.jpg
Born (1972-05-27) 27 May 1972 (age 49)
Coleraine, Northern Ireland
OccupationNovelist
NationalityBritish-Irish
Alma materNew Hall, Cambridge
Genrefiction, historical fiction
Notable worksAfter You'd Gone (2000); The Hand That First Held Mine (2010); Hamnet (2020)
SpouseWilliam Sutcliffe
Children3
Website
maggieofarrell.com

Maggie O'Farrell FRSL (born 27 May 1972) is a Northern Irish/British novelist. Her internationally acclaimed debut novel, After You'd Gone won the Betty Trask Award.[1] A later novel, The Hand That First Held Mine, won the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award – for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017.[2] She appeared in Waterstones' 25 Authors for the Future.[3] Her memoir I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020[4] and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards.[5]

Early life and career[]

O'Farrell was born in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. At the age of eight, she was hospitalised with encephalitis and missed over a year of school.[6] These events are echoed in The Distance Between Us and described in her 2017 memoir I Am, I Am, I Am.[7] She was educated at North Berwick High School and Brynteg Comprehensive School, and then at New Hall, Cambridge (now Murray Edwards College), where she read English literature.[8]

O'Farrell has stated that well into the 1990s, being Irish in Britain could be fraught: "We used to get endless Irish jokes, even from teachers. If I had to spell my name at school, teachers would say things like, 'Oh, are your family in the IRA?’ Teachers would say this to a 12-year-old kid in front of the whole class.... They thought it was hilarious to say, 'Ha ha, your dad's a terrorist'. It wasn't funny at all.... I wish I could say that it's [less common today] because people are less racist, but I think it's just that there are new immigrants who are getting it now." Nevertheless, not until 2013's Instructions for a Heatwave did Irish subjects become part of her work.[9]

O'Farrell worked as a journalist, both in Hong Kong and as deputy literary editor of The Independent on Sunday in London. She also taught creative writing at the University of Warwick in Coventry and Goldsmith's College in London.

Books[]

O'Farrell's numerous successful novels, including the Costa-Award-winning The Hand that First Held Mine, have received widespread critical acclaim. Work of hers has been translated into over 30 languages. Her novel Hamnet, based around Shakespeare's family, was published in 2020.

In 2011 she contributed the short story "How the Oak Tree Came to Life" to Why the Willow Weeps, an anthology sold to fund the work of the Woodland Trust, which planted five trees for each copy sold.[10]

Her 2017 memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, deals with a series of near-death experiences that affected her and her children.

Personal life[]

O'Farrell is married to fellow novelist William Sutcliffe, whom she met while they were students at Cambridge. They live in Edinburgh with their three children.[11][12] She has said of Sutcliffe: "Will's always been my first reader, even before we were a couple, so he's a huge influence. He's brutal but you need that."[13]

Media[]

O'Farrell was the invited castaway on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs on Sunday 21 March 2021.

Awards and honours[]

Bibliography[]

Novels[]

  • After You'd Gone (2000)
  • My Lover's Lover (2002)
  • The Distance Between Us (2004)
  • The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2007)
  • The Hand That First Held Mine (2010)
  • Instructions for a Heatwave (2013)
  • This Must Be the Place (2016)
  • Hamnet (2020), Penguin Random House ISBN 9780525657606

Autobiography/Memoir[]

  • I Am, I Am, I Am (2017)

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b www.fantasticfiction: Maggie O'Farrell Retrieved 6 November 2019.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b "Derry-born author wins Costa prize". The Irish Times. 4 January 2010.
  3. ^ A list of emerging British and Northern Irish writers of the 21st century expected to produce the most impressive body of work over the next quarter-century. [1] Archived 28 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Flood, Aison (9 September 2020). "Maggie O'Farrell wins Women's prize for fiction with 'exceptional' Hamnet". The Guardian.
  5. ^ Beer, Tom (25 March 2021). "National Book Critics Circle Presents Awards". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
  6. ^ Sale, Jonathan (17 May 2007). "Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Maggie O'Farrell". The Independent. Archived from the original on 26 May 2007.
  7. ^ Kean, Danuta (24 March 2017). "Maggie O'Farrell memoir to reveal series of close encounters with death". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 October 2017.
  8. ^ "O'FARRELL, Margaret Helen, (Maggie)". Who's Who. ukwhoswho.com. 2019 (online ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription or UK public library membership required) (subscription required)
  9. ^ "Maggie O'Farrell: Teachers would say 'Are your family in the IRA?'". The Irish Times. 23 June 2016.
  10. ^ "Why Willows Weep: Contemporary Tales from the Woods". goodreads.com. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  11. ^ "Meet Maggie". maggieofarrell.com. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
  12. ^ Kiverstein, Angela. "William Sutcliffe: Imagining Gaza in London". www.thejc.com. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  13. ^ Day, Elizabeth (23 February 2013). "Maggie O'Farrell: 'My writing is tougher and much better since I had children'". The Observer.
  14. ^ Brown, Mark (26 November 2013). "Costa book awards 2013: late author on all-female fiction shortlist". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 November 2013.
  15. ^ "O'Farrell wins 2020 Women's Prize for 'Hamnet'". Books+Publishing. 10 September 2020. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b "Australians comprise majority of Walter Scott Prize shortlist". Books+Publishing. 24 March 2021. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
  17. ^ Bayley, Sian (6 July 2021). "RSL launches three-year school reading project as new fellows announced". The Bookseller. Retrieved 6 July 2021.

External links[]

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