Diane Setterfield and Daisy Johnson Interviewed by Hannah Beckerman

Two Oxford novelists Diane Setterfield and Daisy Johnson talk about the central themes in their new works and about their setting in the city in which they live.

They will discuss the river as a central theme in their novels, the character of the unknown child who arrives into a community and disrupts its apparent equilibrium, the theme of storytelling, how mythology infuses their fiction, and Oxford as a setting.

Setterfield’s Once Upon a River is a historical novel that revolves around an apparently drowned child who suddenly stirs back into life. Her first book, The Thirteenth Tale, sold three million copies and was turned into a television drama starring Olivia Colman and Vanessa Redgrave.

Johnson’s debut novel Everything Under is about solitary Gretel who grew up on a canal boat with a mother she has not seen since she was 16. A phone call from hospital interrupts her isolation and throws up questions from the past.

Discussions are chaired by critic and writer Hannah Beckerman, who also appears at another festival event to talk about her new novel, If Only I Could Tell You.