Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1985. As a teenager she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, which served as inspiration for her first novel, Burial Rights, which has been translated into 20 languages. Kent is the co-founder and publishing director of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings, and is completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011, she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award. Her Wordfest appearance has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Burial Rites

The historical fiction novel Burial Rites is set in Iceland in 1829. Agnes Magnúsdóttir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men. Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jónsson with his family. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoids speaking with Agnes. Only Tóti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes’s spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the summer months fall away to winter and the hardships of rural life force the household to work together, Agnes’s ill-fated tale of longing and betrayal begins to emerge.