Like any writer, I try and read as much as I can. My most recent favourite reads are:

• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray – funny, clever, moving, poignant, this is the kind of book you can get happily lost in for hours.
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters – a brilliant evocation of post-war Britain.
• Mrs Hemmingway by Naomi Woods – Exquisitely written, this book wears its craft with lightness and grace, deftly evoking history and character and plunging us straight into the heart of each woman’s story.

Some other, long-standing favourites are:

Novels
I love pretty much anything by Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Ann Tyler, Barbara Trapido, and Isabel Allende. Other favourite novels include:

• Not Wanted on The Voyage, Timothy Finlay
• When Rain Clouds Gather, Bessie Head
• The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes, Annie Proulx
• The White People, Maggie Gee
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Short Stories

• No-one Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
• For Esme, With Love and Squalour, J.D.Salinger
• After Rain, William Trevor
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro

Poetry

• The Adoption Papers, Jackie Kay
• Belfast Confetti, Ciaran Carson
• Kid, Simon Armitage

Non-fiction

• Out of Time, the pleasures and perils of ageing, Lynne Segal
• Edgelands, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts
• The Small Heart Of Things, Julian Hoffman