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Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels, Orbital, The Western Wind, Dear Thief, All Is Song, and The Wilderness, which won the Betty Trask Prize, and one work of nonfiction, The Shapeless Unease. Her books have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, and the James Tait Black Prize, as well as longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize, with Orbital winning the 2024 Booker Prize. She lives in Bath, UK, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University.
Samantha Harvey's website
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The inspirations behind my Booker-shortlisted book
I wanted to write about our human occupation of low earth orbit for the last quarter of a century – not as sci-fi but as realism. Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer? Could I write about amazement? Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral? These were the challenges I set myself.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
Roald Dahl's Danny the Champion of the World. That amazingly evoked relationship between a boy and his dad helped me understand (in my own kid-way) something new about the love between parents and children, and my own love for my parents.
The book that made me want to become a writer
This is difficult. I'm going to say Waterland by Graham Swift. I think it's the strength and quality of Swift's world-building, his gorgeous, layered storytelling flair and the sheer conviction of that novel that made me itch to write. It made me think, not, 'I could do that' but 'I wonder if I could ever do that?'
I haven't reread it, I don't dare. But I've since read other books by Swift and my admiration's undented.
The book...
Rebecca Boyle is a columnist at Atlas Obscura and a contributor to Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Popular Science, Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine, and many other publications. She ... (more)
Lisa Kaltenegger is the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell and Associate Professor in Astronomy. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modeling potential habitable worlds ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Orbital
Try:
Alien Earths
by Lisa Kaltenegger
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