Jessica Jarlvi’s debut novel, the psychological thriller When I Wake Up, featured on bestseller lists in the US and Australia, and was selected “Book of the Year” by Magrudys in 2018. Her latest book, What Did I Do? deals with mental health and human trafficking. Born in Sweden, she’s lived in the UK, the US and the UAE, and has worked in publishing and PR. A former Montegrappa prize winner, she now balances her time between writing and her growing young family.

Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the author of five novels, six plays, and a collection of plays, essays, and short stories.  His first novel, One Eye Red (Ett öga rött), received the Borås Tidning Award for Best Literary Debut Novel and became the bestselling paperback in Sweden of any category in 2004. With his inventive literary acrobatics and his unwavering social pathos, Jonas Hassen Khemiri is constantly reinventing himself and what language can do – both on the page and in society at large.

Robert Twigger is a British author, poet and adventurer. After attending Oxford University he trained with the Tokyo Riot Police, which became the subject of his bestselling book Angry White Pyjamas. He is the author of eight books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as several collections of poetry.

Gianrico Carofiglio’s Guido Guerrieri series of legal thrillers is like John Grisham. But Italian. And better. Why? Well as a former anti-Mafia prosecutor, governmental advisor and Senator he is a stickler for accuracy, writes like a relaxed Umberto Eco and really knows how to tell a story. Imagine a tauter, more toned version of Andrea Camilleri’s engaging Montalbano, if Salvo M were a lawyer. Yes, that good.

Last week broadcaster, voice artist and Lockdown LitFest host Simeon Courtie interviewed illustrator and author Curtis Jobling. This week Sim takes the guest’s chair, from his lockdown bunker south of Banbury, Oxfordshire, telling Paul Blezard about his own writing career. 

With his exceptional talent for gripping storytelling, Mark Billingham has become a household name in British crime fiction. His interview with journalist and broadcaster Julia Wheeler unpacks his varied career, from stand-up comedy to TV acting, screenwriting to book writing. Mark’s latest novel, Cry Baby, a prequel to his Sunday Times bestseller Sleepyhead, has had its own lockdown setback: he tells us how the epilogue to the book had to be changed, as it was initially set in a sunnily pandemic-free 2020…

Paula Byrne joins us from under the ‘wide open skies of Arizona’ to delve into the transatlantic life of Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy – American ‘royalty’ transplanted into English aristocracy – and to tell us about her latest book, historical novel Mirror Mirror, based on the life of Marlene Dietrich. Byrne also talks about bibliotherapy, the ancient art of book healing for mental health, as promoted and practised by her charity ReLit.

Carol Drinkwater was struggling to find her dream house by the sea when her now-husband suggested they start looking at ruins. An estate agent in the South of France took them to see a run-down house surrounded by ten acres of olive groves — at five times her budget. She took a leap and emerged, 30 years later, with not only an organic olive oil business but a series of memoirs and travelogues centred on the world of olives that have sold millions of copies. She talks to us about her latest novel, A House On The Edge of the Cliff, the resurgence of interest in All Creatures Great and Small, and the plague attacking olive groves in Europe.

John Niven was in L.A. in the days running up to Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Knowing that a Trump win would mean a whole lot of pain for humanity, he decided to find any possible silver lining and rang his wife in England to tell her to start placing bets. Similarly, when the lead character in his new book, The F*ck-it List, is told he has terminal cancer he decides to make the best of it — by killing the people who’d wronged him. In his Lockdown LitFest interview he talks about the pros and cons of writing screenplays and books, explains how being on set as a writer is like being a spectator at an orgy and reveals what he did with his Trump winnings.

Kate Mosse is a number one international bestselling novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer.

The author of six novels and short-story collections – including the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel) and Gothic novels The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she is adapting for the stage – her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and published in more than forty countries.

She is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a regular interviewer for theatre and fiction events. Kate divides her time between Chichester in West Sussex and Carcassonne in south-west France.

Actor, comedian and number one bestselling author Robert Webb discusses his debut novel, Come Again, with Paul Blezard.