1. Maggie O'Farrell's acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award.
14 Facts About Maggie O'Farrell
1. 2.
Maggie O'Farrell 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.
3.
Maggie O'Farrell appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future.
4.
Maggie O'Farrell suffered from a pronounced stammer during her childhood and adolescence.
5.
Maggie O'Farrell was educated at North Berwick High School and Brynteg Comprehensive School, and then at New Hall, University of Cambridge, where she read English Literature.
6.
Maggie O'Farrell worked as a journalist, both in Hong Kong and as deputy literary editor of The Independent on Sunday in London.
7.
Maggie O'Farrell taught creative writing at the University of Warwick in Coventry and Goldsmiths College in London.
8.
Maggie O'Farrell has lived in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Hong Kong, and Italy.
9.
Maggie O'Farrell's books have been translated into over 30 languages.
10.
From 2020 to 2022, Maggie O'Farrell published two pictures books for children, Where Snow Angels Go and The Boy Who Lost His Spark, both illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini.
11.
Maggie O'Farrell was the invited castaway on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs in March 2021.
12.
Maggie O'Farrell has said that she got the idea for the novel after seeing Lucrezia's portrait, attributed to Agnolo Bronzino, and from reading Robert Browning's poem, "My Last Duchess", in which Lucrezia makes a brief, silent and unnamed appearance.
13.
In 2023 Maggie O'Farrell won the author award at Harper's Bazaar's Women of the Year awards.
14.
Maggie O'Farrell is married to a fellow writer, William Sutcliffe, whom she met while they were students at Cambridge; they didn't become a couple until ten years or so after they graduated.