Edinburgh Gliterary Lunch with Laura Barnett and Clare Clark

The Gifts
Laura Barnett

The Author

Laura’s debut The Versions of Us, was a number-one bestseller and, along with her second, Greatest Hits, was published in multiple countries and languages. This Beating Heart is out in August 2022; and Gifts is released in paperback in November.

As an arts journalist and theatre critic, Laura has written regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph and Time Out London.   She also writes non-fiction, short stories, and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University and has mentored for the Arts Emergency and Spread the Word.

Laura lives with her husband Andy, son Caleb and cat Eno in rural Kent.

The Book

Twelve people , twelve gifts , one Christmas to remember. A delightful modern spin on The Twelve Days of Christmas, Barnett’s heart-warming novel revolves around a dozen interconnected people and their struggles to alight upon the perfect gift for someone they love.  … the world was still licking its collective wounds and there was still suffering everywhere, suffering and loneliness and sadness. Despite all this, it was good: it was kindness, it was giving without thought of recompense, it was light in the darkness. 

From the no. 1 bestselling author of The Versions of Us comes a novel about how wonderful and sad and difficult and happy and strange Christmas can be. Stories to inspire, move and comfort.

Praise for Laura Barnett

I thoroughly enjoyed this gorgeous festive tale. Told in the form of interlinked short stories, it’s beautifully written and highly emotionally intelligent.  Daily Mail

Trespass
Clare Clark

The Author

Claire read History at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she was a Senior Scholar, and graduated with a Double First.  Her first novel, The Great Stink, was published in 2005 after a five-way auction: critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, it was long-listed for the Orange Prize, won the Pendleton May First Novel award in the UK and the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices award in the USA. It was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year.  She has since published five more books: The Nature of Monsters; Savage Lands, Beautiful Lies; We That Are Left; In the Full Light of the Sun and Trespass.  Her work has been translated into six languages.  She writes for various newspapers and magazines, both in the UK and the USA, is a  frequent chair at literary events and sits on the Advisory Board of Cheltenham Literature Festival.

The Book

As a young woman, Tess falls into activism and the influence of a charismatic environmental protester. She has never been happier. When he suddenly disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone, she is devastated. Gradually Tess rebuilds her life with her baby daughter Mia.

As Mia nears her thirteenth birthday, the death of a relative sparks questions – about her mother’s activism, about her family, about her father – that Tess avoids or cannot answer. And when a letter is discovered, Tess suddenly has urgent questions of her own. As mother and daughter pull apart, caught up in their own private journey for answers, the certainties of memory and history begin to unravel and a single shocking question emerges: if your past is all a lie, then who are you?

Praise for Clare Clark

A magnificent, nuanced, and intricate novel. Trespass is as political as it is personal, both moving and psychologically fascinating.  Sadie Jones