Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning poet, playwright and novelist with a serious talent for storytelling — and an equally serious collection of literary prizes to prove it. Her debut adult novel, The Mercies, shot straight onto the Sunday Times bestseller list, won a Betty Trask Award, landed a spot on the NYT 100 Most Notable Books of 2020, and was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Not bad for starters! Her follow-up, The Dance Tree, was a BBC Between the Covers book club pick, and her children's books — including the much-loved The Girl of Ink & Stars — have been nominated for pretty much every major prize going, from the Costa Children's Book Award to the CILIP Carnegie Medal (twice!). She lives in Oxford with her husband, artist Tom de Freston, and their rescue cats Luna and Marly. Almost Life is her third novel for adults, and we have a feeling it's going to be her best yet.
Cicely Mary Baker's Flower Fairies books occupied a great deal of my childhood thoughts and fantasies. The Flower Fairies of Autumn was probably my favourite, with the most pored over image probably the Beechnut Fairy, with their dashing cap and impish grin. I took the lovely, vintage furniture from my mother's dolls house and made the fairies in our garden a little den with sofas, a bed, a little glass lamp to read by. The furniture was ruined by damp and exposure but my mum was nothing but encouraging - as she always has been - of my imagination!
Recently I've become a cheater - historically I've been a one-book woman but something shifted after having our daughter, and now I have two or three on the go and pick up according to mood. Currently the rotation is Wreck by Lizzy Stewart, Deviants by Santanu Bhattacharya, and Whidbey by T Kira Madden - so far I can wholeheartedly recommend them all.
Museums, preferably the strange, singular ones set up in private homes, like Museum Van Loon in Amsterdam, or Sir John Soane's in London. The best of this sort of collection I've experienced was Casa de los Venados in Valladolid, Mexico - a luxurious private home stuffed full of extraordinary folk art. The owner is often drinking coffee in the courtyard with his basset hound. If I can't travel further than Oxford, the Pitt Rivers is full of stories such as the famous witch's bottle, and if I'm not leaving home of course there are always books such as An Atlas of Cursed Places by Olivier Le Carrer.
It's something I've maintained rather than adopted, but I'm a lifelong user of local libraries. We're spoilt for choice in Oxford, and it never ceases to amaze me how chronically underused they are. Free. Access. To. Books. And authors get paid whenever you loan one of their titles. Win-win.
Read more classics and in translation novels - you'll never have more time or a more open mind than you do in your teens and early twenties. There are still vast gaps in my knowledge of classics, and as there's always something new to read I rarely turn to them. When I turned sixteen my parents organised sixteen friends and family to gift me their favourite books at sixteen, and I still haven't got to How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (my grandma's choice) or my dad's pick, Independent People by Halldór Laxness. One day
