Sarah Hall—twice Booker Prize–nominated author and the only writer to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice—on crafting fiction that is both lush and uncompromising, and how to captivate readers on the sentence level while staying true to creative freedom.

We discuss:

Her early reading life in the countryside and the characters who first sparked her imagination
Lessons learned from an “unpublishable” first novel and how Haweswater found its true form
The discipline and intuition behind her writing process and when to share drafts
Why handwriting first drafts rekindled a sense of play and sharpened her editing
How to build short stories that hold “the world on a pin” and reverberate beyond the page
Giving voice to Britain’s only named wind in Helm and weaving folklore, climate themes, and playfulness
Discerning a story’s ending and sustaining joy in the writing process

About Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall is one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary authors. Twice nominated for the Booker Prize and the first and only writer to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice, she is the author of ten acclaimed novels and short story collections, including Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, The Carhullan Army, and Burntcoat. Her latest novel, Helm, blends myth, climate anxiety, and playful storytelling to bring Britain’s only named wind to life.

Resources and Links:

📑Interview Transcript
Helm
The Helm Wind, the only named wind in Britain - the Met Office
Sarah’s Website
Sarah’s books
“The Grotesques” - BBC National Short Story Award Winner
Interview with Sarah Hall in The Guardian
Faber & Faber - Sarah’s publisher
Lee Brackstone - Sarah’s editor
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien
Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan
Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Light Years by James Salter
Hilary Mantel’s Website

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