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Nick Hornby will be looking through the prism of young adult literature, with special reference to David Almond’s novel Skellig, at the subject of reading and writing, and the lessons that all authors can learn from books intended for a younger readership. He will address the following questions (without necessarily being able to answer them): What are the challenges that writers face in the twenty-first century? Can they do anything about the increasing competition from other forms of entertainment? What happens to young readers when they become older readers? What can we reasonably expect from literature, and are we getting it? And what would happen if today's young adults read only young adult literature for the rest of their lives?  Nick Hornby is the author of six novels, including High Fidelity, About A Boy, and Slam, a book written for teenagers, several works of non-fiction. He trained as a teacher and taught for a couple of years in a comprehensive before his memoir, Fever Pitch, was published in 1992. He has a special interest in the subject of reading and for the last few years has been writing a column about the subject for the American magazine, The Believer. His latest novel, Juliet, Naked, was published in September, and he wrote the screenplay for the film An Education, starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard and Dominic Cooper. In 1999 he was awarded the E M Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.