Having won nine BAFTAs for Best Entertainment Performance, and Best Entertainment Programme, and the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards in 2017, Graham Norton is one of the UK's most treasured comedians and presenters. He presents The Graham Norton Show on BBC1, a show on Virgin Radio every Saturday and Sunday, and is a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

Graham is the author of three novels; the most recent, Home Stretch became an instant bestseller when published in hardback in 2020 in the UK and Ireland and earned Norton dazzling reviews as well as winning the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction. It spent 15 weeks at the top of the Irish Bestseller Chart. Graham’s previous two novels, Holding and A Keeper, were also instant bestsellers both in the UK and Ireland. Holding won the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction while A Keeper was shortlisted for the Specsavers Popular Fiction Award, and the Irish Book Award in the Popular Fiction category.

Home Stretch

Graham Norton

Episode 1: Val McDermid

Val McDermid has sold over 17 million books and been translated into more than 40 languages. She may be best known for her Wire in the Blood series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, which was adapted for television starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris. Further TV adaptations include Traces (BBC) and Karen Pirie (ITV). She also published Resistance, a graphic novelisation of her critically acclaimed radio drama.

Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017, Val has served as a judge for both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2018 Man Booker Prize. The recipient of six honorary doctorates, Val is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and Visiting Professor in the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She is an experienced broadcaster and columnist.

1979

Val McDermid

Episode 2: Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than 45 countries, is the author of more than 50 books of fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. Her latest novel, The Testaments, is a co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning TV series. Her other works of fiction include Cat’s Eye, finalist for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy and The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. She lives in Toronto.

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood

Episode 3: Naoise Dolan

Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer born in Dublin. She studied English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford University. Exciting Times is her first novel, an excerpt from which was published in The Stinging Fly. .

Exciting Times has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards, Dalkey Literary Awards and Waterstones Book of the Year. Naoise was also shortlisted for the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award in 2020.

Exciting Times

Naoise Dolan

Episode 4: Matt Haig

Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of two non-fiction books, Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet as well as seven novels for adults, including The Midnight Library, How to Stop Time and The Humans.

Haig also writes award-winning books for children, including A Boy Called Christmas, which has been made into a feature film for 2021 with an all-star cast. He has sold more than three million books in the UK and his work has been translated into over forty languages.

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Episode 5: David Sedaris

David Sedaris’ books and essays include Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim, Barrel Fever, Theft by Finding, Naked, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and The Best of Me. The audio version of Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls was a Grammy nominee for Best Spoken Word Album. He is the author of the New York Times-bestselling collection of fables, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Wicked Bestiary (with illustrations by Ian Falconer). He was also the editor of Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories. Sedaris’ pieces appear regularly in the New Yorker and have twice been included in ‘The Best American Essays’. There are more than ten million copies of his books in print and they have been translated into twenty-nine languages.

A Carnival of Snackery

David Sedaris

Episode 6: Walter Mosley

The author of more than 60 critically-acclaimed books of fiction, nonfiction, memoir and plays, Walter Mosley’s work has been translated into 25 languages. His books have been adapted for film and tv and his short fiction and nonfiction essays have been published in outlets from The New York Times to The Nation. He has won numerous awards, including an O.Henry Award, MWA’s Grand Master Award, a Grammy®, NAACP Image awards, PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2020 Robert Kirsch Award, and the National Book Award’s Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley

Episode 7: Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier is the author of ten novels, including At the Edge of the Orchard, Remarkable Creatures and Girl with a Pearl Earring, an international bestseller that has sold over five million copies and won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. Born in Washington DC, in 1984 she moved to London, where she lives with her husband and son.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Tracy Chevalier

Episode 8: Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana, and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. Her first novel, Homegoing, was a Sunday Times best seller, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2017 Yaa was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists and in 2019 the BBC selected her debut as one of the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World.

Her second book, Transcendent Kingdom, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and is a New York Times best seller.

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

Episode 9: Lisa Taddeo

Lisa Taddeo is the author of Animal and Three Women, which she is currently adapting for a television series with Showtime. Three Women was both a Sunday Times and a New York Times number one bestseller, the most-picked book of the year in the UK in 2019, the British Book Awards Narrative Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Animal was an instant Sunday Times bestseller on publication in 2021. Lisa lives with her husband and daughter in New England.

Three Women

Lisa Taddeo

Episode 10: Isabel Allende

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, The Stories of Eva Luna and Paula. Her books have been translated into more than forty-two languages and have sold more than seventy-five million copies worldwide. She lives in California. Her new novel, Violeta, will be published in January 2022.

A Long Petal of the Sea

Isabel Allende

Episode 1: Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl, a 16-time Grammy-winning musician and two-time Emmy-winning director, has been one of the most beloved and respected figures on the international music scene since his recorded debut with Nirvana on 1991's generation-defining Nevermind.

Grohl took centre stage with Foo Fighters' 1995 self-titled debut, the first album in a 12-Grammy-winning catalogue that now includes The Colour & The Shape (1997), There Is Nothing Left To Lose (1999), One By One (2002), In Your Honor (2005), Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007), Wasting Light (2011), Sonic Highways (2014), Concrete and Gold (2017) and, most recently, Medicine at Midnight (2021).

The Storyteller

Dave Grohl

Episode 2: Derren Brown

Derren Brown has re-defined magic through his TV and stage events, exhilarating audiences world-wide with a unique brand of mind-control, suggestion, showmanship and illusion. Through his award-winning shows he has gained a reputation as a performer prepared to constantly challenge and break down boundaries. He is also a best-selling author and accomplished painter.

A Book of Secrets

Derren Brown

Episode 3: Miriam Margolyes

Born in Oxford, England in 1941 and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, Miriam Margolyes is an award-winning veteran of the stage and screen, and an internationally acclaimed voice-artist.

Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award for The Age of Innocence, she received an OBE in 2002 for Services to Drama. This Much is True is her long-awaited autobiography.

This Much Is True

Miriam Margolyes

Episode 4: Celia Imrie

Celia Imrie is an Olivier Award-winning and Screen Actors Guild-nominated actress. She is known for her film roles in The Best and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotels, Calendar Girls, Nanny McPhee, Bridget Jones, Absolutely Fabulous, Year by the Sea, A Cure for Wellness, Finding Your Feet, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and the cult TV series Better Things.

Celia Imrie is also the author of her autobiography, The Happy Hoofer, and the top ten Sunday Times bestselling novels in The Nice Trilogy – Not Quite Nice, Nice Work (If You Can Get It) and A Nice Cup of Tea, and Sail Away.

Orphans of the Storm

Celia Imrie

Episode 5: Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy, shoegaze-inspired indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet. Her third album, Jubilee, released in 2021. Crying in H Mart is her first book.

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner

Episode 6: Lemn Sissay

Lemn Sissay OBE is a poet playwright, memoirist performer and broadcaster. Lemn has read on stage throughout the world, from The Library of Congress in The United States to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, from the Opera House of Dubai to London Palladium, and finally, to the heady heights of Wigan library in… Wigan.

Lemn was awarded The Pen Pinter Prize in 2019 when his memoir My name Is Why reached number one in The Sunday Times bestseller list. In 2021 it won the Indie Book Awards nonfiction prize.

My Name Is Why

Lemn Sissay

Episode 7: Miles Jupp

Miles Jupp is an actor, comedian and writer. His work spans across theatre, film, tv, radio, books and stand up. Recent credits include Philippa Lowthorpe’s feature Misbehaviour, Netflix’s Sex Education and ITV’s Grantchester. Further television credits include: Howard’s End, The Crown, The Durrells, A Young Doctor’s Notebook, The Thick Of It, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, and Gary: Tank Commander. Film credits include The Man Who Invented Christmas, Tarzan, Chick Lit, Rosewater, The Monuments Men, The Riot Club, The Look of Love and most recently Greed. Miles has appeared on the West End stage in Angus Jackson’s Neville’s Island and in Alan Bennett’s Home. Miles also starred in his one-man play entitled The Life I Lead toured around the UK and went into the West End.

History

Miles Jupp

Episode 8: Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize, as well winner of Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year at the British Book Awards, and winner of an Indie Book Award. In 2020, she became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart. Her writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time's Style magazine. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband.

Manifesto

Bernardine Evaristo

Episode 10: Weruche Opia

Weruche Opia recently starred as a series lead in I May Destroy You for BBC/HBO, which earnt her a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Other credits include Inside No.9 and Bad Education for the BBC and Top Boy for Channel 4.

Daughters of Nri

Reni K. Amayo