As mother to writers Zadie Smith and Ben Bailey Smith, Yvonne Bailey Smith’s debut novel has been met with a stream of critical and audience praise. Smith’s debut release, The Day I Fell Off My Island, tells the touching story of a young Jamaican teenager forced to leave her island home after the death of her father and start again in England. A story of windrush, family roots, new beginnings and long-buried secrets, it’s surely the start of big things to come from Bailey Smith.
Find her in conversation during this year’s festival with theologian, writer and broadcaster, Tina Beattie whose new novel, Between Two Rivers, is set in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the traumatic disintegration of colonial rule and the descent into civil war.