Join the Grafton Public Library for an evening of tea and conversation with Margot Livesey, whose novel The Road from Belhaven received Honors in the Fiction category of the Massachusetts Book Awards. This relaxed, discussion-based program invites readers to engage directly with the author, asking questions and exploring the themes, craft, and inspirations behind her work. Attendees are encouraged to have read at least one of Livesey’s novels and to bring their own questions for the conversation. Leading up to the event, the library will host a book club discussion and feature a display of Livesey’s novels, offering readers an opportunity to revisit favorite titles or discover her work for the first time.

The Road from Belhaven is a richly imagined historical novel inspired by Livesey’s mother and her “gift of second sight.” Set in late nineteenth-century Scotland, the book illuminates the social constraints faced by women while paying homage to the classic novels that shaped Livesey’s literary imagination. Blending careful historical detail with a subtle strain of magical realism, the novel explores questions of fate, free will, and feminine agency, suggesting that even the most grounded realities are touched by mystery.

This program is sponsored by the Mass Book Awards Speakers Bureau and is presented in collaboration with the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

MARGOT LIVESEY grew up at a boys’ boarding school in the Scottish Highlands, where her father taught and her mother worked as the school nurse. She is the author of nine novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field, as well as The Road from Belhaven, which received Fiction Honors in the Mass Book Awards. Her nonfiction book The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on writing, was published by Tin House Books. Livesey has taught at numerous institutions, including Boston University, Emerson College, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she currently teaches. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., and other organizations, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.