A BEST-SELLING novelist will be giving advice and guidance to aspiring writers in a Dulverton Literary Festival talk at the town hall this Saturday, November 15, at 6.30 pm.

The session, entitled ‘Writing Light and Dark’, will feature Ruth Hogan in conversation with her friend and literary agent, Lisa Highton.

Ruth studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths College and went on to work in local government. A car accident and a subsequent cancer convinced her to pursue her dream of becoming a writer.

The result was her bestselling debut novel The Keeper of Lost Things. Two million copies and six books later, she is now a full-time author, living with her husband and rescue dogs in a rambling Victorian house.

The Keeper of Lost Things follows Anthony, a former author, who collects lost objects to cope with the loss of his fiancée, and his assistant Laura, whom he tasks with returning them to their owners.

The novel explores themes of second chances, loss and the interconnectedness of human lives, ultimately bringing redemption to the forgotten stories behind the lost items.

The Phoenix Ballroom, another of Ruth’s bestselling novels, tells the story of recently widowed Venetia who provides a community drop-in centre for an array of damaged and lonely people.

In Ruth’s latest novel, The Light a Candle Society, a group of people come together to celebrate the lives of those who die alone so they are not forgotten.

Lisa Highton joined Jenny Brown Associates as an Associate Agent in 2022. Until 2021, she was publisher of Two Roads, an imprint she started at John Murray Press/Hachette where she published authors, including Ruth Hogan.

Over a long career in publishing, both in the UK and Australia where she was publishing director of Doubleday, Harper Collins and then Hodder, Lisa has published many bestsellers.