If you'd like to hear more from our panellists, there's plenty on the BBC website.

Adele Parks is the author of more than 20 best-selling novels. In 2012 she spoke to Mariella Frostrup on Open Book about the enduring appeal of 'chick-lit'.

We'll be posting highlights of the festival all weekend; keep an eye on the video carousel above for details - and keep watching this page for links to more archive featuring today's speakers.

We'll have plenty more live conversation today. We're back at 12pm when our panel will be talking about parenting books. Check out the festival programme for details of what else is coming up.

Joining Alex Clark to talk about lies, liars and unreliable narrators:

Adele Parks was born in North Yorkshire. She is the author of twenty bestselling novels, including recent hits Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck. Adele is an ambassador for The National Literacy Trust and a judge for the Costa Book Awards. She has lived in Botswana, Italy and London, and is now settled in Guildford, Surrey, with her husband, son and cat.

Ian Rankin is the bestselling author of over thirty novels and creator of Inspector John Rebus. His books have been translated into thirty-six languages and have been adapted for radio, the stage and the screen. Rankin is the recipient of four Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards, including the Diamond Dagger, the UK’s most prestigious award for crime fiction. Rankin is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded an OBE for services to literature.

Alexandra Wilson is a junior barrister. He mother is White British and her father is Black British. Her paternal grandparents were born in Jamaica and came to England as part of the Windrush generation. Alex studied at the University of Oxford and was awarded two prestigious scholarships, enabling her to research the impact of police shootings in America on young people’s attitudes. She went on to study for a Graduate Diploma in Law and gained her Master of Laws at BPP University of London. Alexandra was awarded the first Queen’s Scholarship by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, made to students showing exceptional promise in a career at the bar.

Today we have three fantastic hosts to lead our sessions and keep the conversation flowing:

Alex Clark is a journalist and broadcaster, who you can often read in the pages of the Guardian, the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement, and hear on BBC Radio 4 programmes such as Front Row and Open Book. An experienced chair of live events, she has also worked as artistic director at the Bath Festival and the Cambridge Literary Festival. Alex has judged the Man Booker Prize and the Orwell Prize. She lives in North London and Kilkenny.

Professor Shahidha Bari is an academic, critic and broadcaster. She studied English at Cambridge and Cornell and is a Professor at the University of the Arts, London. She is the presenter of BBC Radio 3's nightly Free Thinking programme, also known as the Arts and Ideas podcast, and is the occasional host of BBC Radio 4's Front Row. Shadidha is the author of Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes (2019), the winner of The Observer Anthony Burgess Arts Journalism Prize for 2016, and has been a judge for the Forward Poetry Prizes and the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Prize. She writes for The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement and Frieze magazine.

Ace and his partner in troublemaking Vis are alumni from the world-renowned Brit Performing Arts School. The pair were signed up by BBC Radio 1Xtra, at the time a brand new digital radio station. Their groundbreaking lunchtime show achieved cult status, gaining them an acclaimed Sony Gold award. They moved onto the acclaimed drivetime slot, and their own show on Radio 1 every Friday night, championing the changing face of urban music on the UK’s biggest network. The duo have hosted the UK’s premiere black music award show, The MOBOs, cult music and lifestyle program The Illout Show on satellite TV Channel AKA (formerly known as Channel U), and various shows for MTV.

Big Book Weekend is the BBC's celebration of books and reading. Of course, due to current Covid-19 restrictions, the whole festival is taking place online.

Reading can provide escapism in difficult times. It can also - as we'll explore later this weekend - be a powerful tool for helping us improve our mental health.

In addition, books can offer us a unique way of making sense of this moment in history. Writer Jane Ciabattari has compiled a list of authors who have foreseen current events, and journalist Heloise Wood has predicted which novels will flourish in the pandemic era.

Big Book Weekend is an online festival, so we'd love to hear what you think of our speakers. Share your thoughts using #BigBookWeekend on social media.

If so, you're not the only one. But which generation is most likely to lie about their reading habits? The Reading Agency found out in a recent survey:

Too busy to read? You're not the only one.

Image source, Image: Matheus Farias / Unsplash

I’m stuck in traffic. The cheque is in the post. We often tell lies and hope we get away with it. So how can we spot a fellow fibber? Not surprisingly, liars and unreliable narrators are very popular with both readers and writers. Join authors Adele Parks (Lies, Lies, Lies), Ian Rankin (the Inspector Rebus novels) and Alexandra Wilson (In Black and White: Race and Class in a Broken Justice System) to discuss the enduring appeal of liars, and the differences between personal and professional lying.

Image source, Image: Kristina Flour / Unsplash

The first Big Book Weekend took place in May 2020. Authors Kit de Waal and Molly Flatt saw book festivals across the UK cancelled due to coronavirus, and approached the BBC and Arts Council England for help.

After seven crazy weeks they were able to create a free online literary extravaganza. The event attracted over 20,000 live views, and thousands more on catch-up. Many of the visitors had never attended a book event before - and they wanted more.

As a result, Big Book Weekend is back - providing brilliant guests and big ideas for everyone who wants to take a break from the grind of lockdown life. You can see the full programme of events here.

BBC Arts is thrilled to be hosting Big Book Weekend - a free online festival of live events for everyone who enjoys browsing biographies, nattering about novels or perusing paperbacks. We are here all weekend, with a fantastic line-up of best-selling authors including Douglas Stuart, Val McDermid and Sir Lenny Henry in conversation, and a host of thought provoking sessions with writers.

Plan your Big Book Weekend with our full line-up of events. Sessions will be available on catch-up; keep an eye on the top of the page for the latest on-demand and live video.

The conversation starts on Saturday 20 March at 10.30am. You can watch every session as it happens and follow all the stories from the weekend right here.