Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell has spoken about the figures who have shaped and inspired her career, as she appears on The Independent’s Influence List marking International Women’s Day.
From winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020 to seeing Hamnet adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company — and most recently transformed into a star-studded film featuring leading British talent — O’Farrell has reflected further on the literary influences that have shaped her work.
“There are so many women I look up to,” she says.
“Creatively, I think about the Brontë sisters in their passage, writing, all three of them sat around the table and discussing their work and walking around and round the room reading it aloud to each other.”
Read The Independent’s influence list for International Women’s Day 2026 here.
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