Megan Hunter | Days of Light
Sat 22 Nov 2025 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Not every debut writer has their first novel snapped up for film, but that is exactly what happened to Megan Hunter, whose prizewinning The End We Start From went on to garner wide acclaim. Now, with her third novel Days of Light, she brings us her most ambitious and radiant work yet.
Set across six pivotal days over six decades, the novel begins on Easter Sunday, 1938. Nineteen-year-old Ivy, full of hope and longing, gathers with her sprawling bohemian family at their Sussex home on the cusp of war. But when tragedy strikes and her brother Joseph is lost to the river, Ivy’s life is forever altered. At his funeral, she encounters the man she will marry, and the woman she will love for the rest of her life.
Inspired in part by the Bloomsbury Group, but moving firmly into bold fictional and sometimes counterfactual territory, Days of Light is a luminous novel of art and ambition, faith and desire, charting a queer love story of life-affirming, hope-restoring power.
Join Megan Hunter as she discusses this profoundly moving story of love, loss and the pursuit of meaning across the twentieth century.
In conversation with Erica Wagner
Venue: Old Divinity School
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets available soon.
Author Biography
Megan Hunter is a prizewinning novelist, poet and screenwriter. Her first novel, The End We Start From was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Books Are My Bag Readers awards, longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary prize, was a Barnes & Noble Discover prize finalist and won the Foreword Reviews Editor’s Choice prize. It was adapted for feature film by Alice Birch, starring Jodie Comer. Her last novel, The Harpy (2020) is a mythical, yet contemporary novel of revenge and metamorphosis. It was Indie Book of the Month, and translated into multiple languages; she is currently adapting it for television.
Megan also writes poetry and essays; her writing has appeared in The White Review, the TLS, Literary Hub, Five Dials, Ladybeard, Aesthetica Magazine and BOMB. She teaches creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London and also worked for a number of years as a specialist mentor for disabled students at the University of Cambridge. She is currently working on her third novel, as well as further screenwriting projects. She is a By-Fellow at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, and co-organiser of Something in Common, a series of cultural events and experiences.
Chair Biography
Erica Wagner was born in New York and moved to the UK in the 1980s becoming literary Editor for The Times in 1996; a position she held for 17 years. In addition to her career at The Times, Erica has published numerous articles and books, her first being Gravity, a collection of short stories; this was followed 3 years later by the publication of Ariel’s Gift. She has also written for The New York Times and frequently appears on television and radio. and has judged many of the literary World’s most prestigious prizes (The Orange Prize, The Whitbread First Novel Award and the Forward Prize). Erica was part of the panel of judges who declared Yann Martel’s Life of Pi the 2002 Man Booker Prize winner.
