Previously: The 20th Fiction Festival 14th - 16th March 2008

The Festival took place at its usual residence, King's Lynn's Town Hall. lt comprised six sessions of  readings, talks and interviews. Best-selling author and regular guest, Louis de Bernières chose to launch his latest novel, A Partisan's Daughter, at our Festival. Emotional and powerful readings were delivered by all the guests, particularly Tom Phelan, Irving Weinman and another Festival Favourite, Dame Beryl Bainbridge. No less credit is due to the other authors who all delivered passages of their work brilliantly.



The full line-up, with potted biography, is below:

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FRANCIS HENRY KING b. 1923 is a British novelist, short story writer and a poet. Born in Adelboden, Switzerland and brought up in India. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol Oxford. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and left Oxford to work on the land. After completing his degree in 1949 he worked for the British Council; he was posted around Europe, and then in Kyoto. He resigned to write full time in 1964. He is a past winner of the W. Somerset Maugham Prize for his novel The Dividing Stream (1951) and has also won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize. A President Emeritus of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a recipient of the CBE.
 

D J TAYLOR b. Norwich and now lives there again. In the 1920s his grandfather was billed as ‘T T Taylor, the popular comedian’ and was a well-known party performer in the Norwich area. Now in his eighties, his father has his own show on BBC Radio Norfolk and was recently awarded an MBE. D J Taylor writes regularly for The Guardian and The Independent and his novels include English Settlement (1996), winner of a Grinzane Cavour prize, and Trespass (1998), long listed for the Booker prize, The Comedy Man (2001) and Kept – A Victorian Mystery (2006). His Centenary Life of George Orwell (2003) won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. The Bright Young Things (2007).
 

MARION MOLTENO b. Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1944, and left South Africa in 1965 after being involved in student protests against the apartheid regime. She studied in Britain and then lived for eight years in Zambia and has lived in Britain since 1976. She studied at the University of Cape Town, the University of Manchester and has an MA from the Institute of Education in London. She has campaigned for the teaching of minority languages, and was the founder of the South London Refugee Project. Her short story collection, A Language in Common (1987), was translated into five languages including three South Asian languages. Her first novel, A Shield of Coolest Air (1992), won the 1993 David Thomas Award. If You Can Walk, You Can Dance (1998), won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa region, Best Book), and was selected in the top 20 titles in the New Zealand Women's Book Festival. Her latest novel, Somewhere More Simple (2007), is set on the Isles of Scilly.
 

JULIE MYERSON b. 1960 in Nottingham. She read English at Bristol University and has worked for the National Theatre and in publishing. She also works as a journalist. Her first novel, Sleepwalking, was published in 1994, followed by The Touch (1996), Me and the Fat Man (1998), and Laura Blundy (2000). Something Might Happen (longlisted for the Booker Prize),set in Suffolk, The Story of You I(2006) and Out of Breath (February 2008) . Her first work of non-fiction, Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in our House, was published in 2004, followed by a memoir about PE at school - Not a Games Person (2005). Julie Myerson's work has been translated into many languages.
 

SCARLETT THOMAS b. London in 1972. At 25 she drove to Devon instead of going to work, wrote Dead Clever (1998) in two months and was contracted to write the other two Lily Pascale novels In Your Face (1999) and Seaside (1999). In 2000 she was one of 15 writers featured in Matt Thorne’s anthology All Hail the New Puritans. In 2001 she was included in the Independent on Sunday's list of the UK's 20 best young writers, and in 2002 she won an Elle Style Award. Bright Young Things (2001), Going Out (2003), Popco (2004). Her latest book The End of Mr Y (2007) “One of the most exciting novels in recent years” (Jonathan Coe). She currently teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Kent.
 

LOUIS DE BERNIERES b. 1954. Grew up in the Middle East. School - Bradfield followed by Manchester University. After four disastrous months in the British Army, he went to Columbia to work as a teacher in the morning and a cowboy in the afternoon. Has worked as a motor mechanic, landscape gardener and teaching truants in London. He has written six novels, short stories and a play for voices. The War of Don Emanuel’s Nether Parts (1991 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for first novels), 1993 Granta Best of Young British Novelists, Senor Viva and the Coca Lord (1992 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) was made into a film, difficult to follow without reading the book. His latest Birds without Wings (2004 shortlisted for Whitbread Prize for Novels and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize). A Partisan’s Daughter set in North London will appear in March 2008. Lives in Norfolk.
 

DAME BERYL BAINBRIDGE b. 1933 in Formby, Lancashire school Merchant Taylors. Child broadcaster. Actress at Liverpool Playhouse for three years and appeared in Coronation Street in 1962. She is the author of seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays. A selection of her years of journalism with the Evening Standard Something Happened Yesterday (1993) and a collection of her theatre reviews in 2005. In 2003 she was joint recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement. The British Museum has acquired an archive of early unpublished works.
 

LIZ JENSEN b. 1959 in Oxfordshire, the daughter of a Danish father and an Anglo-Moroccan mother. She spent two years as a journalist in the far east before joining the BBC, first as a journalist then as a TV and Radio producer. She then moved to France. “Egg Dancing” was her first novel, followed by “Ark Baby” (1998 shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award), ”The Paper Eater” (2000) and “War Crimes for the Home” (2002 longlisted for the Orange Prize) is currently being adapted for the stage. “The Ninth Life of Louis Drax” was featured on Radio 4’s “Book at Bedtime”. The film rights to this book were bought by Miramax in February 2004. Her latest novel is “My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time” (2007) which is funny and displays her usual vivid imagination.
 

IRVING WEINMAN b. 1937 Boston, Mass. Educated Harvard, Trinity Dublin and Cambridge University. He is the author of five critically acclaimed novels published in USA Tailor’s Dummy, Hampton Heat, Virgil’s Ghost, Easy Way Down and the latest Stealing Home (2004). He is a founder-director of the Key West Writers’ workshop and lives in Sussex and Key West. He is married to the poet Judith Kazantzis.
 

TOM PHELAN was born and raised on a farm in Mountmellick, County Laois, Ireland and is the author of In the Season of the Daisies (chosen by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series and was a finalist for the Discover award) Iscariot and Derrycloney. His most recent novel, The Canal Bridge (2005), has been called "another First World War masterpiece" by the Irish Independent and "powerful and deeply affecting" by Books Ireland. Phelan is currently at work on The Nailer, set against the backdrop of Ireland's industrial schools. As a student, Tom Phelan spent a summer in London working as a conductor on London Transport. He now lives with his wife on the south shore of New York's Long Island. In 2007, he was awarded a writer's residency at the Heinrich BollCottage on Achill Island in County Mayo.
 

Henry Sutton was born in Norfolk in 1963, and lived there until he was 18. Since then he has lived in London. When not writing fiction, he works as a literary journalist. Henry kindly stepped in at the last minute, taking the place of Aminata Forna who was unable to attend.