15 oktober / Cheltenham Literary Festival

11:00am – 12:00pm

Juggling artistic egos, fiery creative temperaments, the financial insecurity of the writing life and a range of personal demons, the private lives of some of our most famous literary couples can be as fascinating as their public works. Clare Clark talks to Dutch writer Connie Palmen whose Your Story, My Story portrays Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ tempestuous relationship from Hughes’ perspective, and Irish writer Nuala O’Connor whose Nora creates a rich portrait of Nora Barnacle, the wife of James Joyce and Irish Literature’s greatest muse. Together they discuss their experiences of writing bio-fiction and dealing with the intimate details of some of literature’s most iconic lives.

Still leading the way in celebrating the written and spoken word, the world’s first literature festival will Read the World, presenting the best new voices in fiction and poetry alongside literary greats and high-profile speakers. The Festival’s pioneering mix of in-person and online events won it a coveted FutureBook 2020: Best Lockdown Event award and its Literature for Schools programme inspires a love of books in thousands of school children.