Maggie O’Farrell
Ambassador
Maggie’s latest book is The Marriage Portrait (shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023).
She is the author of Hamnet (winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, and has also been adapted into a play by the RSC), and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, both Sunday Times number one bestsellers.
Her other novels include: After You’d Gone, My Lover’s Lover, The Distance Between Us (winner of a Somerset Maugham Award), The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine (winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award), Instructions for a Heatwave and This Must be the Place (both shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award).
She has written two books for children: Where Snow Angels Go and The Boy Who Lost His Spark.
As a child, she contracted viral encephalitis, which left her incapacitated for over a year, an experience which has made its way into her work many times. She lives in Edinburgh with her family.