From the acclaimed author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time comes a brilliantly written, darkly funny, lavishly illustrated memoir exploring the complexities of family life and art. The award-winning author Claire Messud joins Mark Haddon for a discussion of Leaving Home and memoir writing.

Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. Mark Haddon, author of celebrated book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has once again portrayed what it is like to be different and see the world differently—this time, in a work a nonfiction, a full color memoir. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, his book is about family and much more, including heart surgery, papier mâché, mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s also about the power of art, in all its varied forms, and coming to terms with the mess of human life. Richly illustrated with images from the author’s childhood, as bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home. Don’t miss hearing from this best-loved British author and his conversation with the award-winning author Claire Messud about this very personal, family-oriented form of writing, documentation, and sharing.

Mark Haddon is the author of the bestselling novels The Red House and A Spot of Bother. His novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and is the basis for the Tony Award–winning play. He is the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, has written and illustrated numerous children’s books, and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England.

Claire Messud’s most recent novel, This Strange Eventful History, was longlisted for the 2024 Booker and Giller Prizes and for France’s Prix Fémina Etranger. Her bestselling novels include The Emperor’s Children; The Woman Upstairs; and The Burning Girl. Currently a Writer-in-Residence at Yale University, Messud taught at Harvard University 2015-2025. She is a co-founder of the Mediterranean Artists Project (MAP), an arts and ideas program in the south of France.

Image of Claire Messud by Lucian Wood