5 words to describe your latest book, The Post-Birthday World?

Fun, funny, painful, warm (for once), and bittersweet.

4 authors who you think should be more famous than they are now?

Richard Yates, Maria McCann, Peter Cameron and Robert Stone.

3 books that had the most profound effect on you before you became a writer?

Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I read fat, lofty novels in my teens and now I read trash.

2 things that you love about book festivals?

Meeting my audience and hamming it up doing readings; like many writers, I am a frustrated thespian.

1 thing you’d change about the publishing world?

The fact that authors are now expected to devote months of their lives to the promotion of every book, which is not only a waste of time but, with its incessant me-me-me, is intrinsically embarrassing. Moreover, some excellent writers are not cut out to be song-and-dance celebrities, are not frustrated thespians.
n 25 Aug, 8pm, £8 (£6).