Her first novel told the story of a boy dying from leukaemia and the latest is set against the backdrop of the Black Death. Casual observers could be forgiven, therefore, for thinking that award-winning writer Sally Nicholls is obsessed with death and dying.

But it is more that she has a penchant for posing imponderables, such as what happens to us after death. “There are some questions that are worth asking, even if you know you are never going to know the answer,” she said. “Death is the thing we aren’t going to know and that’s OK. The process of asking and thinking and wondering is more important than the conclusions that you come to.”

A clutch of awards, including the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize, was heaped on her debut novel Ways to Live Forever when it was published four years ago. Much was made of the fact she was just 23 and she was hailed as one of the most promising young writers for a long time.

The book opens with the arresting lines: “My name is Sam. I am 11 years old. I collect stories and fantastic facts. By the time you read this I will probably be dead.”

Sam sets out on a logical quest to discover the answers to questions such as ‘What’s it like to die?’ ‘How do you know when you’re dead?’ and ‘What happens afterwards?’ And her research on terminally ill children was equally factual, rather than sentimental. “It sounds macabre, but I am interested in big emotions and the way people respond. I found it more interesting than sad. Adults who are parents have more of a problem with it than the children do.

“When you are a teenager, it is all big emotions. They like to read books that reflect that experience of the world and need that melodramatic level of emotional engagement to understand the emotions they are feeling and the limits of the world.

“When I do workshops with them, the stories they write are much worse than anything I come up with.”

At least one of the scenes in the book, which depicts well-meaning adults floundering in the face of a child’s illness, is based on her own memories of being diagnosed with diabetes when she was 11.

The personal catalyst to write about death and the emotions surrounding it came when a friend’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. But the fact that her father died when she was two is something that may have also influenced her perspective.

After completing her degree in philosophy and literature at Warwick, she enrolled on a masters in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa university, where she wrote Ways to Live Forever.

Chosen as the writer on the course who had most potential, she landed an agent and shortly afterwards a book deal.

She and husband Tom, who changed his surname to hers when they married last year, decamped from London to Oxford just before the start of this academic year.

Since the new Mr Nicholls is at Green Templeton college doing an Msc followed by a PhD, they are happily ensconced in college accommodation.

She said: “Oxford is lovely. We are right by the canal so I get to cycle past the boats. I am so pleased Tom got in, because we get to stay here for three years.”

Her second book, Season of Secrets, had a pagan theme, while the latest, set against a backdrop of the Black Plague, will be published next year.

Ways of Living is used as a set text in many schools and a film has been made, although there is no release date as yet.

Does she feel pressure to keep coming up with books that are as well received as her first?

“There is a pressure because at the start you are writing because you love it.

“Then when you start getting paid for it, you start thinking ‘This is work. I’ve got to produce this many words, I have got to keep writing, I have got to pay the rent’.

“And that does change your relationship with writing and with the new book.

“It is great to have that validation and it is great the effect that has on the book and I am not sorry that those things happened but it does make your relationship with your other books more complicated.”

Sally Nicholls is at the Witney Book Festival on Saturday.