The status of American writer, Annie Barrows, is well established by her popular series of children’s books, Ivy and Bean, but she is appearing at the Guernsey Literary Festival primarily to speak about the novel whose run-away success has made her and her aunt, the late Mary Ann Shaffer famous the world over. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society, written by Ms Shaffer, was completed by Annie Barrows following the untimely death of her aunt and was first published in 2008. The rest is literary history.

A former Editor at Penguin Books, Tim Binding, has written several novels including Island Madness, set in occupied Guernsey during World War 2.

He has written comedy drama for the BBC and recently published his first children’s novel Sylvie and the Songman.

Caroline Bird is an accomplished young poet who is currently studying English at Oxford University and is president of the Oxford Poetry Society.

Edward Chaney is now a professor at Southampton Solent University but as an art student in 1972 he befriended the reclusive Guernseyman Gerald Edwards then living in exile near Weymouth. Having encouraged Gerald to complete the novel he was writing, he was eventually presented with the typescript of The Book of Ebenezer le Page, with a dedication to him paralleling fiction, namely the dedication by Ebenezer of his autobiography to his young painter friend Neville Falla. After many rejections, and Gerald’s death in 1976, Hamish Hamilton finally agreed to publish the novel and the rest is history.

A gifted virtuoso, this talented folk-singer will conjure dark-eyed sailors, damsels in distress and rakish knights from an Indian harmonium and steel-string guitar. Expect to be charmed, moved and entertained by a performer and musician of unusual depth and passion.

Alternative rock ‘n’ roll idol and punk poet extraordinaire John Cooper Clarke combines wordplay and punnery, with the delivery of an American beat poet. Vital, hilarious and thought provoking poetry delivered in trademark machine-gun style.

Mary Horlock was born in Australia but grew up in Guernsey. She studied Art History at Cambridge University and then settled in London where she worked as a curator at the Tate for many years, overseeing the Turner Prize and organising innumberable exhibitions for leading contemporary artists. Her debut novel The Book of Lies will be published by Canongate in March 2011. She lives in London with her partner and their two children.
Watch a video of Mary Horlock talking about the Book of Lies and her inspiration in Guernsey.