BATH Literature Festival 2026 has announced that Maggie O’Farrell, the bestselling author of Hamnet, is coming to Bath to celebrate the release of her new novel, Land.

The award-winning Irish author of novels including Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait, After You’d Gone, The Hand That First Held Mine and her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, will be speaking at an evening at The Forum, Bath on Monday 1st June, at 7pm.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet won Waterstones Book of the Year and the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020. The film – for which O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay with director Chloe Zhao – starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, has struck a deep emotional chord with audiences since it opened in cinemas earlier this month.

It won a Golden Globe award for best film drama and one for Jessie Buckley, as best actress in a drama and is also hotly tipped for more success at the Oscars in March.

The new novel, Land, is at once intimate and epic, inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid 19th century: a portrait of a family navigating a legacy of upheaval and survival with resilience and love. This is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts and a particularly loyal dog.

It is also a story about place, and how layers of history change landscapes and the people who live in them. The Bath Literature Festival audience will be among the first to get their hands on a copy of Land, which is published on 2nd June.

The author will not be signing at the event, but books will be stamped with an author signature, exclusive to the Land book tour. There will be opportunities for audience questions during the event.

This year’s Bath Literature Festival runs from Saturday 16th to Sunday 24th May.