Two of Britain’s most popular authors will star at this year’s Jersey Festival of Words.
Joanna Trollope, whose 20-plus novels of modern love, marriage and community life have kept her among the best-sellers for over 30 years, will be appearing at the Island’s own literary festival in September, along with award-winning crime writer Peter James.
Voted Best Crime Writer of All Time by W H Smith readers and winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger, Peter James has recently become a Jersey resident. His latest novel, Dead If You Don’t, is the 14th to feature Brighton-based detective DS Roy Grace in a series that has sold over 19 million copies and been translated into 37 languages.
Joanna Trollope’s latest novel, An Unsuitable Match, explores the challenges of love in later life, with the reactions of grown-up children to contend with.
Novelists signed up for the Jersey Festival of Words 2018 also include some of the most acclaimed new names in modern fiction.
Libby Page’s first novel, The Lido, was snapped up for international publication within hours of submission. It tells the story of a public bathing pool in London under threat from property developers and how such old-style lidos, like Jersey’s own at Havre des Pas, have the power to bring communities together.
Jersey Occupation heroine and groundbreaking artist Claude Cahun is the subject of Never Anyone But You, a new novel by Rupert Thomson, whose earlier work, The Insult, was named by David Bowie as one of the 100 Must-Read Books of All Time.
Libby Page and Rupert Thomson will be joined in the festival programme by Tor Udall, whose debut novel A Thousand Paper Birds received rave reviews for its strange and beautiful interweaving of five lives through a year at Kew Gardens; and costume expert Lucy Adlington, who will give a 1940s ‘history wardrobe’ presentation to highlight her novel The Red Ribbon, about the dressmakers of Auschwitz.
And Jersey’s own aspiring novelists will have the opportunity to gather expert advice from the director of the fiction programme at the Faber Academy, Richard Skinner, author of Writing a Novel, which draws on his years of experience as a writer and teacher.
The Jersey Festival of Words takes place from Wednesday 26 September to Sunday 30 September at venues around the Island.
