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Ghosts and Ghouls, Magic and Murder

Frances Hardinge talks to Katherine Woodfine

Sunday, 6 April 2025

10:00am

1 hour

Department for Continuing Education: Lecture Theatre

£8

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Join Frances Hardinge to explore her latest titles and all the fascinating facets of her award winning, bestselling books. From ghosts and ghouls to magic and murder, this is a not-to-be-missed chance to see one of the country’s most exciting writers.

Hardinge won Costa Book of the Year for The Lie Tree and the Branford Boase First Novel Award for her first children’s novel, Fly by Night. Her latest is The Forest of a Thousand Eyes, the story of a young girl’s journey through a natural world intent on her destruction. Here she talks to Katherine Woodfine, author of the bestselling Sinclair’s Mysteries and the Taylor & Rose Secret Agents series, inmcluding Secrets on the Shore.

Age 9+

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I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

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