“The Palm House is wonderfully balmy and we stroll round the upper verandah looking for fairies. We plunge down into the basement and meet a sinister-looking fish with large blue felt spots over his body and eyes.”

My Week by Salley Vickers

The author of The Cleaner of Chartres spends half-term week chasing fairies, flitting between talks and events, and learning to love an incestuous yet health-and-safety Wagner.
Sunday, 25 November, 2012

More in My week

Dana Bate

Dana Bate's debut novel The Secret Supper Club is a romantic comedy about a twenty-something foodie who wants to ditch academia to forge a career as a cook. As Dana prepares for the upcoming book launch, she's preoccupied by doctors, American football, a presidential debate, dinner with friends, and a recipe for cinnamon buns. More...
Saturday, 20 October, 2012

Simon Rich

Simon Rich's new novel What in God's Name? is set in the offices of Heaven, Inc., where CEO God has grown tired of the way humans are messing up the earth and decides to close it down. Only the actions of two angels with an eye on promotion can prevent the apocalypse. Closer to home, Simon recently spent a week trying to impress his girlfriend via an unforeseen chilli-induced urge for responsible living. More...
Monday, 10 September, 2012

Stuart Evers

Following his acclaimed collection Ten Stories About Smoking, Stuart Evers' debut novel If This is Home explores ideas of identity, dreams and memory in the rain-ravaged north of England and the disorienting neverland of Las Vegas. He tracks his movements in a week of old routines, new distractions and trusted recipes. More...
Friday, 17 August, 2012

Mona Simpson

Mona Simpson's latest novel My Hollywood - her first in a decade - is a tender and witty exploration of the ties of parenthood and of finding a place in the world, told from the viewpoint of an anxious new mother and her pragmatic Filipina nanny. She muses on her half-Syrian identity and plunges into a French language class as her adopted homeland celebrates Independence Day. More...
Monday, 16 July, 2012

John Burnham Schwartz

John Burnham Schwartz's latest novel, Northwest Corner, is a sequel to the bestselling Reservation Road, which became a major movie starring Joaquim Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Connelly, for which he also wrote the screenplay. Some weeks his screenwriting commitments and social engagements threaten to pull him further away from embarking on his next novel... More...
Monday, 11 June, 2012

Peter Stamm

Peter Stamm is one of Switzerland's most acclaimed writers. His latest novel, Seven Years, explores the mysteries of the heart through one man's highbrow marriage and grubby affair, and was recently described by the Telegraph as "an existentialist classic in the making". He spends a week at a writers' retreat on the west coast of Ireland, where he drifts easily into life in the slow lane. More...
Wednesday, 9 May, 2012

Karin Altenberg

Karin Altenberg's first novel Island of Wings was longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize in an eventful winter's-end week tempered by happiness and loss, work and retreat, and the attentiveness and irascibility of strangers. More...
Tuesday, 1 May, 2012

Tim Lott

Under the Same Stars is Tim Lott's sixth novel. His first, White City Blue won the Whitbread First Novel award. His week includes two book launches, a run-in with his daughter and a less-than-impressive farewell gift. More...
Monday, 9 April, 2012

Helen Schulman

Helen Schulman finishes two projects, breaks some habits, winds up alone on a Tuscan hillside a lifetime away from Google Analytics, has a minor run-in at a cafeteria, and looks ahead to wine and olives. More...
Tuesday, 6 March, 2012

Will Wiles

Will Wiles is an architecture and design journalist whose literary debut was recently announced as one of the Waterstones 11 best first novels of 2012. He had his tax return to complete and a magazine to put to bed in the same week of the announcement party at the Piccadilly branch. More...
Tuesday, 7 February, 2012

Courtney Sullivan

Courtney Sullivan is the author and the New York Times bestselling novel Commencement, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review. Maine is her latest novel. She lives in Brooklyn and in the week before Christmas found herself proposed to and enjoyed being mistaken for a truant. More...
Thursday, 12 January, 2012

Ellen Feldman

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank and Scottsboro, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Next to Love is her latest novel. She lives in New York City with her husband. More...
Monday, 5 December, 2011

Craig Taylor

Craig Taylor is the author of Return to Akenfield and One Million Tiny Plays about Britain, which began life as a column in the Guardian. He is also editor of the literary magazine Five Dials. His latest book, Londoners is subtitled The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It. He tells us how he fills his time in and out of London in a not entirely typical week. More...
Monday, 7 November, 2011

Andrey Kurkov

Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg. After completing his military service as a prison warder in Odessa he became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed novels, including Death and the Penguin. The week before his UK book tour included a tête-à-tête with a prime minister and a surprising phone call. More...
Tuesday, 4 October, 2011

Amy Waldman

"Amy Waldman is the national correspondent at The Atlantic. An expert on the Muslim world and the many faces of the War on Terror, Waldman recently launched her debut novel, The Submission, and is still trying to figure out how her 80-page scrap turned into a 300-page book." More...
Monday, 5 September, 2011

Moni Mohsin

Telling it like it is, from London to Lahore, the heroine of Moni Mohsin's latest novel, Tender Hooks, gives us an exclusive insight into her glamorous existence. More...
Thursday, 4 August, 2011

Luke Williams

"Original, brilliant, inconceivable," is how Ali Smith described The Echo Chamber, the debut novel from Luke Williams, who studied creative writing under W.G. Sebald at the University of East Anglia. He describes another week pounding at the keyboard. More...
Tuesday, 5 July, 2011

Sam Leith

Sam Leith, former Literary Editor of the Telegraph, writes of a week of two births: his first novel and his second child. More...
Thursday, 21 April, 2011

Dan Rhodes

Dan Rhodes is the winner of many awards including the Author's Club First Novel Award and the E.M. Forster Award. In 2003 he was named by Granta magazine as one of their Twenty Best of Young British Novelists. He spent a week in limbo with his publisher, seething over the future of libraries, fretting over bills, and reading for the simple pleasure of it. More...
Thursday, 24 March, 2011

Reggie Nadelson

Journalist and film-maker, Reggie Nadelson spent a chilly week in her home town, New York, toying with neighbourhood names, enjoying the idea of being Swedish and burrowing under mink. More...
Thursday, 24 February, 2011

Elizabeth Day

Award-winning journalist (Sunday Times, Elle, Mail on Sunday, Observer) Elizabeth Day's first novel is published this month. She recalls a week from the Christmas break in which an entire day passes in a blur thanks to a bowl of soup. More...
Thursday, 20 January, 2011

Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu, one of the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers to watch, won the 2007 Guardian First Book Prize for his debut novel, Children of the Revolution. Here he shares with us his last week in New York City, a week of drinking so it's hard to blink, enjoying the secrecy of New York's hidden spaces, and packing up and saying goodbye... More...
Monday, 20 December, 2010

Fannie Flagg

Fannie Flagg, acclaimed author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, logs the first week of her American tour promoting her new novel. It was a week brimming with southern charm and grits and fried chicken - and the occasional slice of pie... More...
Thursday, 25 November, 2010

Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart, author of the brilliant Super Sad True Love Story and recently named as one of the New Yorker's Twenty Under Forty, vanquishes his hangover, crashes East Egg and remembers that beautiful first kiss. More...
Thursday, 23 September, 2010

Adam Haslett

The author of Union Atlantic laments the corruption of our youth, ponders the rise of crystal meth and gives in to Twilight. More...
Thursday, 5 August, 2010

Shane Jones

Shane Jones meets Garrison Keillor, watches some TV and heads back to the office. More...
Thursday, 24 June, 2010

Rupert Thomson

This Party's Got to Stop is Rupert Thomson's first venture into non-fiction, recalling the unsettling, anarchic months he shared a house with his brothers following the death of their father. Here he recalls a week in Barcelona. More...
Friday, 7 May, 2010

Marilyn Chin

A night in the life of poet and novelist Marylin Chin; cheap prosecco, breakdancing and nocturnal Chinese brush painting. More...
Tuesday, 30 March, 2010

Samantha Harvey

Samantha Havery's debut The Wilderness was winner of the Betty Trask Prize and shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. She spends a week pondering her critics, celebrating her champions, and writing her next book while revisiting the last. More...
Thursday, 25 February, 2010

Paul Murray

Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies, spends a week perfecting the art of Christmas shopping, battling with the cat and self-medicating with Toblerone. More...
Wednesday, 27 January, 2010

Marcus Chown

Science writer Marcus Chown speaks up for reform of the libel laws, does coco crispie calculations and is outmaneuvered by the postman. More...
Tuesday, 22 December, 2009

Charlotte Grimshaw

New Zealand-born writer Charlotte Grimshaw tours her new book, stalks the Prime Minister and reclaims 'Infidelity'. More...
Thursday, 19 November, 2009

Susan Hill

Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black and the forthcoming memoir Howard's End is on the Landing, loses her dogs, predicts the demise of high street bookselling, and declares global warming a scam. More...
Monday, 12 October, 2009

Ed Hollis

Ed Hollis spends a week shepherding 45 students around Edinburgh, catching up with an old friend in a gay sex dungeon, and attending High Mass on Sunday. More...
Monday, 7 September, 2009

Ali Sethi

Ali Sethi grew up in Pakistan in a family of dissenting journalists and publishers. He recently graduated from Harvard graduate, where he studied under Zadie Smith and Amitav Ghosh. The Wish Maker is his first novel. More...
Monday, 13 July, 2009

Wells Tower

Wells Tower's stories have appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney's and Harper's, and he was awarded the Plimpton Discovery Prize from the Paris Review. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is his first book. More...
Tuesday, 7 April, 2009

Con Coughlin

Con Coughlin is a journalist and commentator specialising in the Middle East and international terrorism. He is defence and security editor of The Daily Telegraph and writes for the Spectator and other periodicals. His new book, Khomeini's Ghost, follows Saddam: The Secret Life, a biography of the fallen dictator. More...
Tuesday, 10 March, 2009

Dirk Wittenborn

Dirk Wittenborn, author of Fierce People, Zoe and Pharmakon, is disappointed by the Super Bowl, out-written by a seven year old and wildly optimistic about the British Weather. More...
Monday, 9 February, 2009

Kathleen Kent

Kathleen Kent's first novel has its roots in her own family history. The Heretic's Daughter follows the story of Martha Carrier, one of the women hanged in the Salem witch trials, whom Kent discovered she was realated to through her mother. A research trip for her second book brings her to Wales, where she gains first hand experience of two great British institutions; the weather and the rail network. Why take one train when you can take four? More...
Tuesday, 13 January, 2009

Daniel Everett

Thirty years ago Daniel Everett and his young family journeyed to South America as missionaries, hoping to convert the Piraha tribe of the Amazon basin. In the intervening years Everett came to reject his faith, lose his family and challenge many of the basic assumptions that Western academics hold dear regarding language, culture and cognition. He tells us about a nerve racking week lecturing to British academics, joy at Obama's election and trying to keep things in perspective. More...
Monday, 8 December, 2008

Mark Crick

Mark Crick, author of Sartre's Sink, teaches DIY at the School of Life, and cuts a sartorial dash at the House of Lords. More...
Thursday, 6 November, 2008

Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell, poet and playwright, records the exultation and despair of the week he launched his new play Liberty at the Globe. More...
Thursday, 2 October, 2008

Rabih Alameddine

Rabih Alameddine, author of The Hakawati, gets nervous on a whirlwind tour of England, Ireland and Scotland, spends evenings filled with wine, poetry and song at Colm Toibin's house and battles endless, endless rain. More...
Friday, 5 September, 2008

Nicholas Hogg

Nicholas Hogg, award-winning author of Show Me the Sky, takes a holiday from writing to brave the cows at camp bestival, run the papparazzi gauntlet out in Soho (blame Rhys Ifans) and meet the original Mr Nice. More...
Friday, 1 August, 2008

Charles Boyle

Charles Boyle, poet, publisher, and now award-winning novelist, recounts the week that saw him collect the McKitterick prize for his first novel 24 for 3 and blow his cover as the man behind Jennie Walker. More...
Friday, 4 July, 2008

Mohammed Hanif

Mohammed Hanif, another of the 'Hay 21', is the author of A Case Exploding Of Mangoes. He spends a week trying to find a Pakistani publisher willing to publish his book despite its inflammatory nature, being a 'Capote nut' and doing 'manly crafts' with his ten year old son. More...
Friday, 6 June, 2008

Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall, author of the Electric Michelangelo and The Carhullan Army, writes of a week of manic publicity, work on her new novel and fielding questions about skinny-dipping. More...
Thursday, 24 April, 2008