Sara Baume - Reading & Conversation with John Fitzgerald

Sara Baume is a unique artist with an idiosyncratic vision. Her remarkable work embraces both the written world and a distinctive visual art practice. 

Her multi award-winning books mix fiction and non-fiction and often embrace the natural world, frequently inhabiting rugged landscapes and exploring our relationships with animals. They include Spill, Simmer, Falter, Whither, A Line Made By Walking and her newest novel Opening Night. 

In her visual art practice, she says that she is “interested in ritual and sacred objects, and in miniatures, and by the uniquely human tendency to create miniaturised utopias”. 

This in-depth conversation with poet John Fitzgerald will explore her creative work, her complex relationship with nature as well as the delicate intertwining of her life and her art.  

Sara Baume

Sara Baume is the author of three novels, the most recent of which, Seven Steeples, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and one book of narrative non-fiction, Handiwork, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. She has received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the E. M Forster Award and in 2023 she was named one of Granta magazine’s ‘Best Young British Novelists.’ Her fifth book, Opening Night, is due to be published in summer 2026. She is based in West Cork where she works also as a visual artist.