Lecture: “Magpie: Looking for Story Seeds Around Us” by British author Frances Hardinge
【2026-E002】
On 15 February 2026, the International Library of Children’s Literature (ILCL) of the National Diet Library (NDL) invited Ms. Frances Hardinge from the United Kingdom to deliver a lecture. Ms. Hardinge is widely known for her young adult fantasy novels, which have won numerous major literary awards in the UK, including The Lie Tree.
Prior to Ms. Hardinge’s lecture, Ms. SAMBE Ritsuko, a translator who has worked extensively on English children’s literature, gave a talk on the appeal of Ms. Hardinge’s works. Ms. Sambe introduced Ms. Hardinge’s works that have been translated into Japanese and offered a feminist perspective on how they may be read and interpreted.
In Ms. Hardinge’s lecture, she spoke about how she finds story ideas in the small incidents of everyday life. She illustrated this process through the metaphor of an imaginary “magpie” perched on her shoulder, which discovers “shiny things” — small, fragmentary seeds that may grow into the heart of a story — and described how she then develops them into a story through an imaginative dialogue with her magpie.
In the following Q&A session, a wide range of questions were asked. Among them were questions to Ms. Hardinge about what she keeps in mind when creating and naming her characters, as well as about the particular strengths of fantasy as a genre. Ms. Sambe was asked about the demand for young adult literature in Japan.
A video recording of the lecture will be available on the NDL’s YouTube channel until the end of March 2027.
Ref :
講演会「かささぎの目：物語の種を見つけるまなざし―英国の作家フランシス・ハーディング氏を迎えて―」
Lecture: “Magpie: Looking for Story Seeds Around Us” by Frances Hardinge will be held (in Japanese)
https://www.kodomo.go.jp/event/event/event2025-16
講演会「かささぎの目：物語の種を見つけるまなざし―英国の作家フランシス・ハーディング氏を迎えて―」（録画配信）
Lecture: “Magpie: Looking for Story Seeds Around Us” by Frances Hardinge (online video) (in Japanese)
https://www.kodomo.go.jp/event/event/event2026-04
(2026.3.31 update)