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Ali Smith talks to Sarah Wood

Glyph: The Anti-War Novel from the Author of Gliff

Hay Festival 2026, 

Ali Smith discusses her latest novel, Glyph – a playful and inventive story which questions the boundary between imagination and reality, skilfully blending the fiction of childhood ghosts with the facts of real-life wars.

It tells the story of sisters Petra and Patch, who make up a ghost as children. In adult life, the estranged siblings are brought back together when Petra finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom.

Smith talks to artist and filmmaker Sarah Wood, who in her own work interrogates the relationship between history and personal memory. Smith is author of several novels and short story collections, and is a winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.