Recreation

Sarah Hall

Hailing from Cumbria, Halls first novel Haweswater was published in 2002 and won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her second novel The electric Michelangelo was short-listed for the 2004 Man Booker prize.

Carhullan ArmyHall started her creative life as a poet and this is clearly signposted in her first two novels through her use of language and the dreamy, ethereal quality they exhibit. Her latest novel, The Carhullan army, is a radical departure which she herself describes as being “very plot driven, full of action, not the kind of thing I usually write.”

Set in an oil depleted future the United Kingdom is controlled by “the Authority” and life has been reduced to a brutal subsidence based existence. It won the John Llewellyn-Rhys memorial Prize for 2007 and has been compared to Margaret Atwood's Handmaids Tale and Orwell's 1984.

Sarah Hall is involved in four festival sessions, a staple festival favourite “Books left on buses”, history and the novel, an opening night reading and finally an individual hour long audience.