Love, secrets, mistrust... Esther Freud's My Sister and Other Lovers, the follow-up to the hugely successful Hideous Kinky, is a razor-sharp exploration of how family shapes desire, identity and freedom, whilst Claire Adam's Love Forms, longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, follows a mother’s search for the daughter she left behind in Venezuela. Chaired by Maggie Gee, OBE. 

Esther Freud, daughter of the painter Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, is author of 10 works of fiction including Hideous Kinky, which was made into a film starring Kate Winslet. Her work has been translated into 13 languages.

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Claire Adam's first novel, Golden Child (2019), won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and was named one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Changed the World.

Maggie Gee's novels include The Red Children, My Cleaner and The White Family (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction), and a memoir, My Animal Life. She is former Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was awarded an OBE in 2012 for her services to literature.

Photo © Jillian Edelstein / Tricia Keracher-Summerfield