A former literary editor, Maggie O’Farrell released her debut After You’d Gone in 2000 and won the Betty Trask Award (a prize for debut novels by authors under 35). Since then the writer has written six novels and become one of the UK’s best storytellers. In 2010, O’Farrell won the Costa Novel Award for The Hand That First Held Mine and her latest, This Must Be The Place, has been shortlisted for the same award this year.

Read Maggie O’Farrell’s short story, On the First Day of Christmas.

Six tales of Christmas: exclusive short stories from our favourite authors