March 16, 2026
I keep coming back to the same image.
You’re sitting in a chair in the QM2 library — 8,000 books on the shelves around you, the Atlantic outside the window — and the author whose novel you just finished is giving a talk down the hall. In an hour, you’ll be at dinner with five other readers you met in the Discord channel three weeks before departure. Nobody is a stranger. Everyone has done the reading.
That’s what this trip is.
Queen Mary 2. New York to Southampton. November 28 to December 5, 2026. Seven nights eastbound across the Atlantic on the last ocean liner in regular transatlantic service.
This isn’t a cruise. There are no ports of call. No shore excursions. No buffet pool deck. It’s seven days of open ocean, an 8,000-book library, and a literary festival running the entire crossing.
Cunard’s partnership with the Cheltenham Literature Festival brings 22 confirmed authors aboard for talks, panels, readings, and conversations. These aren’t authors doing a 45-minute signing at a bookstore. They’re on the ship for seven days. You’ll see them at breakfast. You’ll hear them speak in the afternoon. You’ll end up in the same bar at 10 PM.
Here’s who’s confirmed:
The novelists: Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency). Jenny Colgan (The Cafe by the Sea). Linwood Barclay (No Time for Goodbye). Fern Britton (Daughters of Cornwall).
The historians and journalists: Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads). Bettany Hughes (The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). Philippe Sands (East West Street). Andrew Lownie (The Mountbattens). Colin Grant (Homecoming).
The thinkers: Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships). Philippa Perry (The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read). Layla McCay (Breaking the Rainbow Ceiling).
The performers: Celia Imrie (Orphans of the Storm — based on the Titanic orphans, departing from the same Southampton port). Pam Ayres (Britain’s best-loved living poet). Fidelis Morgan (Unnatural Fire).
The spies: David McCloskey (Damascus Station — former CIA analyst turned thriller writer).
Plus Sophie Raworth, Julia Wheeler, Josh Glancy, Charlotte Ivers, Susie Goldsbrough, and Jason Crampton.
Twenty-two authors. One ship. Seven days. Nowhere to be but here.
I’ve curated 22 books across four reading tracks for this crossing. Each track offers a different lens for the voyage:
The Crossing — the weight of centuries. Historians, biographers, and the grand narrative of the transatlantic crossing itself. Start with Frankopan’s The Silk Roads and end with Maxtone-Graham’s The Only Way to Cross — the definitive history of the ocean liners that came before the QM2.
The Festival — heart, warmth, and the particular ache of stories that cross water. Colgan’s Scottish islands, Toibin’s Brooklyn, O’Connor’s Star of the Sea. The love stories, the immigration stories, the novels that know what it means to leave one shore and arrive at another.
The Library Bar — travel writing, espionage, thriller, and the Atlantic itself as subject. McCloskey’s CIA thriller alongside Winchester’s biography of the Atlantic Ocean. Read these in the ship’s library and glance at your fellow passengers differently.
The Lookout — classical literature reimagined, psychology, poetry. Haynes retelling the Trojan War through women’s voices. Miller’s Circe. Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea. The intellectually ambitious track for readers who want to think hard between horizons.
This sailing is available to anyone through Cunard. So why book through me?
Because I’m going. And because I’m building something around it.
When you book through Early & Away, you get:
The literary festival programming is the same regardless of how you book. The community is what I add.
Dates: November 28 (depart New York, Brooklyn Cruise Terminal) to December 5, 2026 (arrive Southampton, England)
Duration: 7 nights
Starting from: $1,667 per person + tips, double occupancy (Sheltered Balcony, BV class). Includes Britannia Restaurant dining, champagne in cabin, and private group cocktail party.
Booking: Book through Early & Away or reach out to me directly at stacy@earlyandaway.com.
You’re a reader. You’ve thought about a transatlantic crossing but never pulled the trigger. You might be traveling solo and that’s made you hesitate. You like the idea of a literary festival but you don’t want to show up alone.
You won’t be alone. I’ll make sure of it.
Trip announcements, curated reading lists, and the occasional dispatch — before anyone else.