Three novelists at the top of their game discuss their publishing journeys, with Judith Heneghan, novelist and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Winchester.

Claire Fuller won the Costa Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize with her last novel, Unsettled Ground. Claire’s new novel The Memory of Animals is published on the eve of the Festival. It’s a taut and emotionally charged novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice. Claire lives near Winchester.

Chibundu Onuzo wrote her first novel The Spider King’s Daughter, under the duvet at St Swithun’s School during her A Levels. Her latest, Sankofa, was a Reese Witherspoon’s Bookclub and BBC Two Between the Covers pick.  Sankofa is a funny, gripping and surprising story of a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew.

Frances Liardet’s new novel Think of Me is set in the Hampshire village of Upton. Central character, James Acton has come to Upton to begin again. As his grief over the death of his wife eases, he hopes to find new purpose as the vicar of this small, Hampshire parish, still emerging from the long shadow of the war. Frances’ previous novel We Must Be Brave is a New York Times bestseller.