Hiscox Young Authors – Barney Norris and Claire Fuller

Event sponsored by Hiscox

Barney Norris – Five Rivers Met on a Wooded PlainOne quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide – all facing their own personal disasters. As one of those lives hangs in the balance, the stories of all five unwind, drawn together by connection and coincidence into a web of love, grief, disenchantment and hope that perfectly represents the joys and tragedies of small town life.

Barney Norris grew up in Salisbury. He founded the theatre company Up In Arms and won the Critics’ Circle and Offwestend Awards for Most Promising Playwright for his debut full-length play Visitors. He is the Martin Esslin Playwright in Residence at Keble College, Oxford. Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain is his first novel. ‘Remember the name Barney Norris. He is a new writer in his mid-twenties, but already outstanding.’ The Times.

Claire Fuller – Our Endless Numbered Days coverWriter and artist Claire Fuller’s first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut fiction. At age eight in 1976, Peggy Hillcoat spends her summer camping with her father, playing her beloved record of The Railway Children and listening to her mother’s grand piano. After a family crisis which Peggy doesn’t fully understand until later, her survivalist father James, takes her from London to a cabin in a remote European forest. There he tells Peggy the rest of the world has disappeared and she isn’t seen again for another nine years.