Autumn: An Evening with Kate Mosse

‘I remember the chill autumn days, the air heavy with the smell of bonfires and dusk, damp mulch of leaves underfoot.’

To close NBF26, Kate Mosse celebrates the time of shifting light, sharpening pencils and crisp mornings. In a magical adventure through the season, she describes the ever-changing colours of the autumn landscape, the crunch of leaves underfoot, the drift of migrating birds and the last of the sun's warmth for the year. She takes us to the marshlands of her childhood, when they are at their mulchy, misty, golden hued best. In the reed banks she spots plovers and Goldeneye duck. Along the sea wall, she glimpses purple sea lavender, Brent geese and curlews, in the oak pond, herons and little egrets.

Exploring folklore, nature and creativity, this is an atmospheric portrait of the autumn season from one of our best-loved writers.

The event will be followed by book sales and a signing with the author and host.

Tickets: £14

Age Guidance: 16+

Kate Mosse

Kate Mosse, CBE, is an award-winning novelist, playwright, performer, campaigner, performer, interviewer and non-fiction writer. The author of eleven novels and short-story collections, four works of non-fiction and three plays, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries. The inspiration for all of Kate's writing is place and the stories that come out of the landscape of southwest France, Holland, South Africa and her native Sussex. The Founder Director of the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, she is also the founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign, a visiting professor in creative writing and contemporary fiction at the University of Chichester, and a Trustee of the British Library. In January 2024, she was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature, women and charity.

Hosted by Kate Sawyer

Kate Sawyer worked as an actor and producer before writing several short films then turning her hand to fiction.

Her second novel This Family was a Waterstones Book Of The Month and Paperback of the Year. Her debut, The Stranding, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the East Anglian Book Award for fiction, was adapted for BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and is being developed for the screen. Getting Away is her third novel and was a Bookseller Pick of The Month.

Kate is the Artistic Director of the annual Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival, in the Suffolk town she grew up in and returned to after the birth of her daughter.