This in-person reading will take place at a centrally-located venue in Houston, Texas.

New York Times bestseller Maggie O’Farrell will give a brief reading from her new novel The Marriage Portrait, followed by an on-stage conversation with a well-known writer, and a book sale and signing. 

General admission tickets for $5 will go on sale Friday, September 23, 12 pm noon. For more information on season subscriptions, click here.

MAGGIE O’FARRELL is “a miracle in every sense” (Ann Patchett). In 2020, O’Farrell published the New York Times bestseller Hamnet – “a family saga bursting with life, touched by magic, and anchored in affection” (The Boston Globe). Now translated into more than 32 languages and optioned for the screen by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, Hamnet was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction. O’Farrell’s debut novel After You’d Gone won the Betty Trask Award and The Hand That First Held Mine was recipient of the Costa Book Award for Fiction. Her other works include the novels The Distance Between Us, Instructions for a Heat Wave, This Must Be the Place, and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am.

She joins us to read from and talk about her new novel The Marriage Portrait, which follows the story of young duchess Lucrezia de’Medici as she makes her way in sixteenth century Florence. When the duke’s eldest daughter dies unexpectedly on the eve of her wedding, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into a troubled marriage and an unfamiliar court. Packed with beauty and emotion, O’Farrell’s new novel offers an extraordinary portrait of one resilient woman’s attempt to shape the future of the powerful Ferranese dynasty. O’Farrell was born in Northern Ireland and lives in Edinburgh.