Maggie O'Farrell is a British author of contemporary fiction, who features in Waterstones' 25 Authors for the Future It is possible to identify several common themes in her novels – the relationship between sisters is one, another is loss and the psychological impact of those losses on the lives of her characters. O'Farrell won the 2010 Costa novel award

Costa Book Awards

The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....

 on 4 January 2010 for her novel, The Hand That First Held Mine .

Biography

Maggie was born in Ireland and grew up in Wales and Scotland. At the age of eight she missed a year of school due to a viral infection, an event that is echoed in The Distance Between Us. Maggie worked as a journalist, both in Hong Kong and as the Deputy Literary Editor of The Independent on Sunday

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

. She has also taught creative writing.

She is married to the novelist William Sutcliffe

William Sutcliffe

William Sutcliffe is a British novelist.An alumnus of Haberdashers' Aske's School, Sutcliffe started his career with a novel about school life entitled New Boy , which was followed by his best-known work so far, Are You Experienced? , a pre-university gap year novel, in which a group of young...

, whom she met at Cambridge

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...

. They live in Hampstead Heath

Hampstead Heath

Hampstead Heath is a large, ancient London park, covering . This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band of London clay...

, London, with their two children.

Novels

• After You'd Gone (2000)
• My Lover's Lover (2002)
• The Distance Between Us (2004)
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006)
• The Hand That First Held Mine (2010)

External links

• Maggie O'Farrell official site
• Maggie O'Farrell's Top 10 favourite chillers, in The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  (British Council)
• Maggie O'Farrell talks about The Distance between Us on MeetThe Author.co.uk