Arvon asked me to create a 5-Day Writing Challenge for them and you can now sign up to receive it for free via email starting on Monday 20th July. Since it’s the National Year of Reading in the UK, I’m getting writers to use any book they might have in their house as inspiration, but to find out how, you’ll have to sign up.
By the end of the five days you should have a piece of fiction, maybe finished, or maybe the start of something longer.
Sign up here.
And in November I’ll be teaching on a Arvon course at The Hurst in Shropshire, about writing a novel and reaching the end. More information on that, here.
I’ve had a fun time chatting with lots of podcasters, journalists, and interviewers about Hunger and Thirst, all of them with a slightly different take and of course different questions. Some are audio only, there are several written interviews and one video. Take your pick!
If you’re looking for horror author interviews, you’ve come to the right place. Each week (or just about), I sit down with some of the most prominent voices in horror fiction to ask questions about their inspiration, their writing process, and much more. Episodes are released on Tuesdays on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Substack, and Youtube.
She says: “Chatting about one of my favorite reads this year, Hunger & Thirst, author Claire Fuller joins me to unpack the unreliable narrator, the modern Gothic, tapping into formative experiences, and so much more. Hunger & Thirst is a brilliant novel that sings with dread, another facet that Claire and I dig into, and I hope everyone gives this book a read. Seriously, this is the kind of novel I live for, and Claire was such a lovely conversation partner.”
A book podcast with book lover Brett Benner of bretts.book.stack on instagram and youtube. Author interviews and bookish conversations to help add more to your TBR pile!
You can listen to this or watch on Youtube. Brett is one of my favourite interviewers. This is what he says: “Brett talks with Claire Fuller about her new novel, ‘Hunger & Thirst’. They discuss writing without a plot, being drawn to dark stories, horror movies, book lists, and find out who became a character in the book.”
The interview starts: Claire Fuller never thought she would be a writer. Raised in a small Oxfordshire town, the award-winning novelist has “no real memory” of books in the house and recalls an outdoorsy childhood – living in cottages her father would do up, using outdoor loos, raising chickens, and “pigs that we killed and ate”. (“We named them as well,” she says over video call from her home in Winchester. “They were called Johannes, Sebastian, and then they disappeared one Christmas and we had pork for Christmas dinner.”)
They say: “Pod People, do we have a conversation for you! In this episode, we speak with Claire Fuller, the award-winning author of Hunger and Thirst, a novel that explores girlhood and belonging and desire and the things that haunt us. We discuss the intersection of sculpture and storytelling, cursed homesteads, the complexity of female friendships, and how disgusting and unsettling flies are, both in the book and in real life.”
The interview starts: Hunger and Thirst, a literary horror and suspense novel set in 1980s Britain, felt like it was made for me to read…I had the opportunity to interview the wonderful Claire Fuller this month. Here, we discussed art, horror, true crime, and the ways in which the three can be immensely interwoven.
Little Atoms is a weekly show about books, with authors in conversation.
This is what he says: “Claire Fuller gained a degree in sculpture from Winchester School of Art, but went on to have a long career in marketing and didn’t start writing until she was forty. She has written five previous novels including: Unsettled Ground, which in 2021 won the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize, Swimming Lessons, which was shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award. On this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest novel Hunger and Thirst.”
The interview starts: Picture a haunted house. What do you see in your mind’s eye? Perhaps a Gothic pile, a ruined tower, some bats? Probably not a suburban bungalow in Hampshire, but that may change once you read Claire Fuller’s genuinely disturbing literary horror, Hunger & Thirst.
From KMUW Studios and part of the NPR Network, Marginalia is a weekly 29-minute show hosted by Beth Golay. Episodes always features an author interview, and sometimes include editorial commentary, book reviews, indie bookstore reading recommendations and other marginalia to enhance the reading experience.
She says: “Claire Fuller’s new book, Hunger & Thirst, is a thriller and gothic horror novel, but don’t let that scare you too much. It’s creepy, but primarily in an atmospheric sense. This is my second interview with Claire Fuller. We spoke in 2017 about her novel Swimming Lessons. Although she might be best known for her fourth novel, Unsettled Ground, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction and won in the novel category of that year’s Costa Book Award. Hunger & Thirst is her sixth novel. Here’s our conversation.”
Co-hosts Corrie and Lucia met at university. Fast forward half a lifetime, and they now talk just about everyday, recording their discussions about books every fortnight.
They say: “We had an amazing time hearing Claire compare the art of sculpting to the art of writing, why her novels end in ambiguity, how writing is really hard work, and how the only thing that ties Claire Fuller books together is that nothing ties them together.”
Claire Fuller’s latest novel is inspired by her teenage years living in a haunted bungalow in Winchester… and it’s not for the faint-hearted. When I sat down with award-winning author Claire Fuller in a cosy village pub just outside Winchester, the first thing I told her was that her new book Hunger and Thirst gave me nightmares. She seemed delighted. Given the themes of the novel, I can’t blame her.
I’m delighted that Hunger and Thirst has been selected by The Globe and Mail (Canada’s most widely read national newspaper) as one of Summer’s Best Books. As the author of the piece, Emily Donaldson says, “Summer, traditionally, is publishing’s quietest season, but for many it’s the season most associated with long stretches of uninterrupted reading. No claims to comprehensiveness in the ensuing, genre-ordered list – just a way of sorting the season’s most promising titles by what they do and how they feel. If you’re in the mood for historical sweep, family drama, formal experiment, or something leaning toward the unsettling and uncanny, here’s a place to start.”
There are plenty on this list that I would love to read, including the novel Hunger and Thirst was set beside, The Longest Death by Kevin Jagernauth. I’m also looking forward to getting my hands on My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, Deborah Levyand Pool House, Mary H. K. Choi
Hunger and Thirst is the first of my six novels to feature an artist, which surprises me, since I was one myself for many years.
Ursula is a reclusive and famous sculptor in her fifties, whose first job at sixteen is working in the post room of the art school where I studied sculpture. There’s a lot about art and wood carving in this novel, and these sections were wonderful to write – almost like making the pieces without (much of) the effort! In the book, Ursula examines and is critical about a sculpture of some ribs and intestines, which was in fact the first carving I ever did.
It’s Belletrist’s book club pick for June (I’ll be doing an Instagram Live with them on 6 June), and on Thursday 4 June I’ll be live on a Canadian TV breakfast show (remotely!). There are lots of podcast interviews about to pop up, but you can already listen to me chatting to Horror in the Margins. Also on Thursday 4 June, I have a US online launch event at 6pm EDT, which is free to attend, you just need to sign up here.
I hope you enjoy the book if you pick it up, and if you see it in any Canadian or US bookstores, take a picture and let me know.
1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job delivering mail at a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and—delightfully— some new friends, including wild-child, Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at the Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist this hodgepodge family. But as Sue’s behavior and demands become more extreme, Ursula who has always been hungry—for food—and more importantly for love, acceptance and belonging carries out her friend’s terrible dare. And, for this, Ursula finds herself haunted—literally haunted.
Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by true-crime documentary-maker, Emma Zahini who is digging into an unsolved disappearance. But it is not only the filmmaker who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without.
From critically acclaimed and award-winning author, Claire Fuller, Hunger and Thirst is a compelling and chilling tale of loneliness and female friendship, of the dangerous line between wanting and needing, and of how far a person will go to truly belong.
Hunger and Thirst, my sixth novel, is published in the UK today by Fig Tree / Penguin. Of all my novels it’s the one that has the most of me in it. It’s set in the town where I went to art school, and stayed; Ursula, the main character works in the post room of the same art school; and she lives in the squat I lived in in 1989. But there the similarities end.
I’d love it if you bought it or borrowed it from a library and read it. If you like it, let me know what you think. Take a picture and put it on social media, or take a picture of it on the tables or shelves in any bookshops you happen to step into. I’d love to see. If you’re on Instagram, you can tag me: @writerclairefuller
Ursula, a famous and reclusive sculptor is being hounded by a true crime documentary maker. She wants to interview Ursula about the events that happened at The Underwood in 1987 when Ursula was sixteen. In the summer of that year she meets a colleague, Sue, who becomes her friend, and who dares her to do various things. ‘Your turn next,’ Sue says. Eventually Sue dares Ursula to kill someone and when Ursula actually does, she is haunted for the rest of her life.
If that sounds like your sort of thing, you can buy it from your lovely local independent book shop, who are very likely to have some signed copies (I signed several hundred for independents). Or you can buy it from Bookshop.org which supports independents. Or you can buy it from Waterstones.
I’d also love to see you at one of my forthcoming events. In person or online. More details here.
I’m absolutely delighted to let you know that Hunger and Thirst has been selected for the BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime slot. It will be broadcast on Radio 4 starting on 11th May at 22.45. It has been abridged into ten 14 minute parts and I’m curious to know what Sian Preece has kept in and what has been discarded.
It is read by actor, Juliet Aubrey, and produced by Eilidh McCreadie. I hope you manage to have a listen, but do keep in mind that apparently Book at Bedtime books lose 80%! So if you’d like to buy the full version, have a look here.
Do you love books where the house is almost as important as the human characters? Me too.
I’ve just finished Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans and I loved the mismatched, ugly Dimperley Manor full of taxidermied animals. (I’ll be speaking to Lissa about it at Winchester Books Festival on 19th April 2026 – join us!)
And it got me thinking about other novels where the houses are full of presence, including, ahem, one of mine.
There are a few stately homes amongst this lot but not all of them are grand. You’ll also find houses full of sand, houses and land passed down through time, and one I almost forgot, the graphic novel, The Wreck by Lizzy Stewart which was published this week. (Thanks to my Librarian Husband for the finger.)
Tell me what I’ve missed! There are already others that I’ve been thinking of as I type, including North Woods, and Brideshead Revisited. But let me know which other novels you love where the house is (almost) centre stage.
Click on the pictures to be taken to Bookshop.org (UK) where you can buy most of them.
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I’ll be shortly going on a UK tour for my next novel, Hunger and Thirst. I’d love it if you could join me on one of my visits, or online – including a US online event. More details here.
I’m going on a UK book tour for Hunger and Thirst!
I’ll be travelling from North to South and East to West. And I hope that you can join me at one of my stops. If none of them are near you, then you might be able to join me on one of my two online events.
The tour kicks off with a launch in Winchester on 8th May. This two-hour event includes a glass of wine and a piece of cake, and the chance to win some bookish goodies. I’ll be interviewed by author and journalist, Rebecca Fletcher followed by a Q&A and book signing. If you’re local, please do join me.
I’ll be doing two events that include music from Henry Ayling who has written some creepy piano music as featured in the book. My events with him are in Bristol, and later in the year, Southampton.
My two online events are on 12th May hosted by the Bridport Prize when my literary agent, Jane Finigan from Lutyens and Rubinstein will be in conversation; and on 20th May with Bard Books and Blue Pencil. If you can’t make it to an in-person event, I hope you’ll be able to make it to one of these. Booking will be available soon.
And, if you aren’t in the UK, but would like to come to a US-based online event, then I’ll be online on June 4 6pm EDT.
I’m delighted that The Bookseller – the trade magazine for booksellers in the UK – has interviewed me about Hunger and Thirst, and unexpectedly I’m on the cover. Can you spot the extra little fly they’ve added?
I was interviewed by Alice O’Keeffe, who starts with:
Picture a haunted house. What do you see in your mind’s eye? Perhaps a Gothic pile, a ruined tower, some bats? Probably not a suburban bungalow in Hampshire, but that may change once you read Claire Fuller’s genuinely disturbing literary horror, Hunger & Thirst.
You probably need a subscription to The Bookseller to read the rest of it, but you can read it here.
And if it sounds like your kind of thing you can pre-order it here from Bookshop.org, and it will pop through your letterbox on 7th May or thereabouts.
