Maggie O'Farrell

O'Farrell was born in Northern Ireland and raised partly in Wales and Scotland; at eight she contracted encephalitis so severe she nearly died, an experience that runs underneath much of her later writing about mortality and its nearness.

Her earlier novel The Hand That First Held Mine won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, and her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death became a number-one bestseller. She began Hamnet (2020) partly out of fear after her own child nearly died of meningitis.

Hamnet, a speculative account of Shakespeare's wife and the death of their son that shaped Hamlet, won the Women's Prize; O'Farrell co-adapted it for a 2025 film, earning an Academy Award nomination. She lives in Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.