Another year, another Cheltenham Literature Festival and I have to say that each year the women's fiction offering gets bigger and better, with this year's line-up including Caitlin Moran, Gill Hornby, Audrey Niffenegger, Rachel Johnson, Jilly Cooper, Lucy Atkins, Laura Barnett, Lisa Genova, Victoria Hislop, Veronica Henry and Helen Lederer, to name a few.
It's great to have commercial fiction recognised and women writers so well represented and amongst this year's biggest draws on the women's fiction front were Marian Keyes and Jojo Moyes, and what great ambassadors. Although both authors admitted to struggling with the idea of chick lit and the dreaded pink covers!
Whilst Moyes worries that the moniker chick lit does writers a disservice, Keyes baulks at the idea of being called a romance writer. Both authors had similar reservations about the way books are packaged, with Keyes urging her publishers away from a pink cover for her debut and Moyes happy with the gender-neutral covers that she's been assigned in recent years.
Indeed, Moyes praises the advent of e-readers in helping her to reach male readers who are 'free of the shame of holding a pink cover'. And both writers condemned the sexism that still occurs in literature and the media, Keyes slamming the way fiction written by women for women suffers immediate disparagement and Moyes criticising the male favouritism amongst writers.
Moyes was speaking about her latest novel, After You, the sequel to Me Before You, which she admits was a difficult novel to write, aware as she was of the readers' investment in her characters and wary of their responses. It was in fact Marian Keyes who gave her the advice she needed to move forward, by encouraging Moyes to put herself in a bubble.
There were still difficult decisions for Moyes to make, including the plot itself, and then the question of Louisa's lover. Moyes even acknowledged an earlier draft which saw Louisa as a paramedic but which was later discarded. Moyes admits that the idea of a sequel had not really crossed her mind but with the rush of reader responses to Me Before You and then the screenplay, which Moyes worked on, meant that the characters never left her and she began to question what would happen next, acknowledging that Louisa would not have been able to walk away unscathed from the events of Me Before You and wanting to deal with the grief, anger and guilt that she is left with.
For Keyes, the idea of a sequel is quite difficult, as she puts her characters through so much in her novels and by the end they're in a good place that to write a sequel would mean disrupting their peace.
Both authors faced the 'which of your books is your favourite' question - aka which of your kids do you love the most - and whilst Keyes admitted that it tends to be the one she's working on at the time, Moyes was unequivocal in choosing Me Before You, identifying it as the book that changed everything for her. Ironically she feared that it would be the book that would kill her career, but in fact the opposite and she explained that at the time of writing it she was between publishers and she wasn't even sure the book would be published and it allowed her to write without expectations and proved a completely liberating experience.
Moyes' inspiration came from a real life story on Radio 4 and she suggests that if you open any newspaper you'll find fifteen novels waiting to be written. Similarly the inspiration for The Ship of Brides came from talking to her gran.
Keyes similarly expressed an interest in the lives of real people, acknowledging that there's a 'whole universe' going on behind each of us.
Whilst Keyes is working on her next novel - which she hinted currently focuses on a long-time couple who press pause on their relationship - Moyes has recently finished filming on her debut screenplay of Me Before You, which is due for release next year and which she loved working on. (Look out for a sneaky cameo!)
A couple more adaptations are in the pipeline but don't fear Moyes confessed she wouldn't give up the writing.
It was a pleasure and an insight to hear from both authors and here's to their continued success. Many thanks to the Cheltenham Literature Festival team.