“They have traveled for most of the day using what little daylight the season offers leaving Ferrara Dawn and riding out to what he had told her was a hunting lodge, far in the northwest of the province. But this is no hunting lodge is what Lucrezia had wanted to say when they reach their destination, a high walled edifice of dark stone flanked on one side by dense forest and on the other by a twisting meander of the Po River. She would have liked to turn in her saddle and ask, Why have you brought me here?” That’s Maggie O’Farrell, reading from her brilliant new novel The Marriage Portrait, a finalist for our 2022 Book of the Year. In front of a live audience at the Barnes & Noble in Eastchester, New York, Maggie takes us to Renaissance Florence and behind the scenes of her page-turning historical novel and its untamable heroine, the writers who inspired her (from Robert Browning and Wilkie Collins to Daphne DuMaurier and Patricia Highsmith), her writing process (including post-it notes and pinboards), what’s next for her and more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Books:
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne DuMaurier
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
Matrix by Lauren Groff

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).