Claire Fuller: ‘Dylan Thomas showed me that writing could make me feel everything’

Novelist Claire Fuller's earliest reading memory dates to age five, when she would read the "Mind your head when leaving your seat" plaque on the upholstery of a coach she took to school. Growing up in the late 1970s, her favorite book was John Michell's Phenomena, which explored strange, potentially true occurrences like fish showers and spontaneous human combustion. Fuller found comfort and inspiration in authors such as Shirley Jackson, Denis Johnson, and Elizabeth Strout, with Dylan Thomas's work particularly demonstrating to her how writing could evoke profound emotions.