Samantha Harvey: ‘Endless cosmic goodness has come my way’

Thinking back to the evening of 12 November 2024 – could you describe how it felt to win the Booker? Did you think you had a good chance of winning, and what was your initial reaction? 

I was certain I wouldn’t win. I’d rarely been more certain about anything. I wish in some ways I’d prepared myself more and had a little more poise when the announcement was made – instead I struggled to get up from my seat, to retrieve my speech (which I wrote quickly, never imagining I’d need to read it), to take that hallowed trophy into my hands. Even now, I struggle to reconcile myself with the fact of having won. That moment in which it happened is, perhaps, the most vivid moment of my life.  

What were the next few hours, days and weeks like? What surprised you the most during that time? 

Mad. An onslaught – from the announcement straight into interviews, a brief whoop at the after-party then to bed, up first thing for two days in a press office doing back-to-back interviews, a weekend off and then… it doesn’t stop. It hasn’t stopped. By early January, the whole of 2025 was mapped out in events and travel. It isn’t for the faint-hearted.  

But I remember walking across Vauxhall Bridge a day or two after winning – it was a soft November night, humming and peaceable. I felt an immeasurable, unforgettable serenity and alright-ness with the world. Liberation. That’s one thing that surprised me – that there was great peace in the noise. Another thing that surprised me was that nobody wrote to say there’d been an admin error and actually I hadn’t won.  

What’s been the most of out-of-this world thing about the last year? And what’s helped bring you back down to earth? 

I’ve made friends with astronauts. Somehow they’ve embraced my fraudulent trespass into their world with a generosity I couldn’t have imagined. Meeting Laurie Anderson (a hero of mine); knowing Barack Obama and Yo-Yo Ma have read Orbital. Endless cosmic goodness has come my way. I’ve been grounded by the love and support and patience and humour and zero-bullshit companionship of my partner, Rick.  

When we spoke to you back in October 2024, you said winning the Booker would buy you time to work on your sculptures and that you’d blow the rest of the prize money on expensive Danish liquorice. Have you found time to sculpt this year? And how much liquorice have you eaten? 

I’m learning that the gift of time that the Booker brings – that is, by not having to teach any longer, for example – is a promised gift, not yet realised. This year I’ve barely sculpted, I’ve written next to nothing, I’ve done very little but manage the glorious, overwhelming fallout of the prize. I mean to sculpt more this coming year and perhaps to cobble together a small exhibition.  

Meanwhile, so much liquorice. People in signing queues have presented me with it, as have friends; my Danish publisher has been very obliging on that front too, and you’ll be pleased to know that I’ll stick avidly to my expensive-Danish-liquorice commitment, even when the full glory of the Booker passes to someone else.