Guest chair: Caroline Sanderson

Trees provide wonderful backdrops to so many stories and William Boyd and Victoria Schwab are grand masters at this. Both authors have casts of beautifully portrayed characters - including a wild array of trees. Come and hear them talk about their different worlds, about passion and revenge, the challenges of writing in another time, and the influence that nature has had on their lives and their work.

Attendees will be able to ask questions at the end of the discussion.

The event is free to attend, but donations to The Tree Council are welcome.

About William Boyd

William Boyd was born in Ghana and grew up there and in Nigeria. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa, won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. His other novels include Stars and Bars, The New Confessions, and Brazzaville Beach which won the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. An Ice Cream War was also shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His novel Any Human Heart won the Prix Jean Monnet award and Restless won the Costa Novel of the Year Awards. Seventeen of his screenplays have been filmed, including The Trench, which he also directed, and he is the author of five collections of short stories. He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

About Victoria Schwab

VICTORIA “V.E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the internationally acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the Villains series, the Cassidy Blake series and more. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is set to be adapted into a feature film by eOne and First Kill – a YA vampire series based on Schwab’s short story – is set to hit Netflix, produced by Emma Roberts’ Belletrist Productions. When she's not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters. Her newest book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, follows the title character across centuries and continents, across history and art, as she learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

About Caroline Sanderson

Caroline Sanderson is a writer and books journalist based in the Cotswolds. She is Associate Editor of The Bookseller, and the editor of ALCS News, the monthly newsletter of the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society, for whom she also hosts a podcast, Authors’ Matters.

Caroline is Artistic Director of Stroud Book Festival, and a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. She regularly interviews authors about their books on page, screen and stage, and is also the author of five non-fiction books of her own.

Her favourite tree is probably the beech but she is also awed by ancient yews.