Meet the debut authors of 2014

From Michèle Forbes to Zoe Pilger, Emma Healey to Zia Haider Rahman, we talk to seven first-time novelists who'll be making a splash this year

• Liz Hoggard, Corinne Jones, Tim Lewis and Kate Kellaway
• The Observer, Sunday 12 January 2014

Michèle Forbes, author of Ghost Moth: 'The finer details were tidied up while waiting for my children at their swimming classes.' Photograph: Katherine Rose

MICHÈLE FORBES

The actor's debut novel paints a picture of a vibrant Belfast from the 1940s leading up to the Troubles

Not many first novels come emblazoned with quotes from Roddy Doyle ("Clever, unpredictable, beautifully written and crafted") and Sebastian Barry ("A bountiful river of lovely images, fresh and perfect, a triumphant story both familiar and strange"). But Michèle Forbes, who has just published Ghost Moth – a family drama about secrets, lies and an illicit affair – is an award-winning theatre, TV and film actor who has worked as a literary reviewer for the Irish Times.
Although she grew up in Belfast in the 1970s, Forbes knew she didn't want to write yet another book about the Troubles. Instead, she focuses on the period from the 1940s to the 1960s.
For most of the book, we're gripped by the story of Katherine, who chooses to marry safe, reliable George, a firefighter, rather than young tailor Tom McKinley who makes her feel alive. But you can feel political conflict approaching.

The book opens in 1969 with Katherine, now a mother of four, nearly drowning when she encounters a seal in the freezing Irish Sea. It's clearly an emblem of buried turmoil. The book then tracks back 20 years to when Katherine, an amateur opera singer, meets Tom for the first time.
Forbes studied English and psychology at Trinity College, Dublin. Later, she began acting with the Abbey Theatre Company, touring worldwide with such productions as The Great Hunger and Dancing at Lughnasa.
Today she lives near Dalkey, Dublin, with husband, Owen Roe (last seen as Boss Finley alongside Kim Cattrall in Sweet Bird of Youth at the Old Vic), and two children. But in many ways Ghost Moth is her love letter to Belfast, which is presented as a buzzing carefree city back in the late 1940s.
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