Literary Calendar
Events for July 4, 2013 through September 3, 2013
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Memoir Writing Workshop with Damian Barr, Bloomsbury Institute
Everybody has a story to tell. However seemingly ordinary or extraordinary your life is – or was. The contemporary memoir is tellingly popular. To make readers care as much about your story as you do, you must have the finesse of fiction. This intensive two hour workshop with columnist, writer, playwright and salonnière Damian Barr will encourage you to focus your life story and give it literary credibility by casting yourself as the central character and focusing on the specific&hellip
Emma Donoghue in conversation with Sir Michael Rutter, RSL
This event is organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and is being held as part of the 2013 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. Is the understanding of children a science or an art? Emma Donoghue’s seventh novel, Room, which has been garlanded with prizes and has sold over a million copies, explores the mind of a five-year-old, Jack, whose whole world is an 11 ft-square garden shed shared with his mother. Donoghue drew inspiration from ancient myths and from the horrific crimes&hellip
Antonia Fraser at the Idler Academy
Wednesday 10 July, 6.30pm-8.30pm. Cost: £20 (includes cocktails, nibbles and £2 discount on the book). Historian Antonia Fraser comes to the Idler Academy for a salon of learned discussion based on her new book, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832, which the critics have praised as a thrilling read. Enjoy intelligent conversation and take home a signed copy of the book. The Reform Bill of 1832 was a crossroads in British history, when Whig clashed with Tory,&hellip
The Letters of Italo Calvino: with Michael Wood and Martin McLaughlin, LRB
Princeton’s new selection of over 600 of Italo Calvino’s letters stretches from the end of the Second World War to the author’s death in 1985 and contains, among many other jewels, his letter of resignation from the Italian Communist Party, eyewitness reports of the Parisévènements of 1968, and an account of a meeting with Che Guevara. John Banville has written of them ‘Calvino liked to present an inscrutable face to the world, but this literally marvelous collection of letters shows him&hellip
Holland House: A Talk by Linda Kelly at Lutyens & Rubinstein
Linda Kelly brings to life the colourful world of Holland House, providing a vivid portrait of London’s greatest political salon. In the first thirty years of the nineteenth century – when the Whig party were almost constantly out of office, the home of the third Lord Holland became the unofficial centre of the Opposition. Combining politics and the arts, the salon attracted the greatest names of the age: Byron,Thomas Macaulay, Talleyrand and Madame de Stael all dined at Holland House. More&hellip
Terry Eagleton: Across the Pond, LRB
Join Terry Eagleton on a journey through the language, geography and national character of the United States. To mark the publication of his new book Across the Pond, Terry will be in in conversation with Christian Lorentzen, Senior Editor at theLRB (and an American). Henry Hitchings writes: ‘Terry Eagleton has a gift for the kind of generalisations that at first appear outrageous but seem, on reflection, annoyingly perceptive. Were I one of the expressive Americans he describes, I’d call this book awesome;&hellip
Philipp Meyer discusses The Son at Lutyens & Rubinstein
Philipp Meyer’s debut novel, American Rust, was a significant critical success both in the US and UK with comparisons made to the writing of Steinbeck, Faulkner and McCarthy. The Son is an epic, panoramic novel that maps the violence of the American West through the lives of an ambitious family, as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim. Love, honour and children are sacrificed in the name of ambition as the family becomes one of the richest powers in Texas. Violent,&hellip
Writers Talk at ZSL London Zoo – Ruth Padel on hummingbird, bleeding heart dove and amethyst starling
RUTH PADEL Ruth Padel is a British poet and writer with close connections to conservation, wildlife, Greece and music. She has published a novel, eight works of non-fiction and eight poetry collections, most recently The Mara Crossing, which mixes poems and prose to explore migration: how cells migrate in our bodies, and animals, birds and people migrate across the globe. She writes and presents BBC Radio 4′s Poetry Workshop on writing poems, in which she works with poetry groups across&hellip
Attention! Joshua Cohen in conversation with Brian Dillon, LRB
Joshua Cohen was born in New Jersey in 1980 and is the author of five works of fiction. Of one of them, Witz, the LRB’s Christian Lorentzen wrote (in the New York Observer) ‘[It is] the sort of postmodern epic that arrives like a comet about once every decade, likeInfinite Jest or Gravity’s Rainbow.’ In Attention! a (short) history(Notting Hill Editions) he turns his shrewdly attentive gaze on attention itself: what it has been, what it is now, how we pay it, and how it can&hellip
David Goodhart on The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration, Foyles
David Goodhart argues that liberal thinking on immigration has, in recent years, promoted two contradictory ideals. On the one hand there is the ideal of ‘solidarity’, or the desire that people in society, wherever they originate from, should be unified by one common purpose. And on the other hand there is the ‘diversity’ argument, which calls for the differences that immigration brings to society to be celebrated. In Goodhart’s opinion diversity has won out over solidarity, leading him to advocate&hellip
Judith Mackrell in conversation with Sarah Churchwell about Flappers, Daunt Bookshop
For many young women, the 1920′s was a promise of liberty: they shortened their skirts and shingled their hair, smoked, drank, took drugs and claimed sexual freedoms.In Flappers, celebrated dance critic Judith Mackrell follows six women – Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Tamara de Lempicka – who, between them, exemplified the range and daring of that generation’s spirit.Sarah Churchwell’s latest book, Careless People, also explores the 1920′s, and the scandals that rocked America’s upper&hellip
Emily’s Walking Book Club reads Breakfast with the Nikolides, Daunt Bookshop
Join other book-lovers for a walk on Hampstead Heath to discuss Rumer Godden’s coming-of-age classic. Fleeing Nazi France, Louise brings her two daughters to India to be reunited with her husband. Here, eleven-year-old Emily finds herself caught in a tangled web of adult relationships, as fragile and troubled as the family’s feelings towards India, their new home. First published in 1942, Godden’s haunting novel of lost innocence is an enduring classic. More information/book tickets
Robert Adam on The Globalisation of Modern Architecture, Foyles
Based on the principle that design unavoidably follows social change, politics and economics, Robert Adam’s analysis in The Globalisation of Modern Architecture casts a new light on recent building. In Adam’s view, globalisation is driving out the uniqueness and character of cities and buildings, reducing them to a monotonous regularity. But does architecture and do architects nowadays really lack an inner conviction, leaving them prey to the vicissitudes of outside forces? Tonight Adam will be defending his thesis in front of our&hellip
Susie Boyt and Damian Barr at Hardy’s Brasserie, Marylebone
Dinner and a show! Come and hear Susie Boyt and Damian Barr discuss identity, forgiveness and the importance of jokes to survival. Susie Boyt’s books include The Small Hours and her memoir, My Judy Garland Life. Damian Barr has just published his memoir, Maggie and Me. For more information, email hardysbookdinners@gmail.com. More information/book tickets
Rachel Kushner in conversation with Nina Power, LRB
Rachel Kushner’s new novel The Flamethrowers takes place in the art world of the 1970s, and explores themes of gender, terrorism and authenticity. Naomi Fry wrote in the LRB ‘Kushner isn’t only a novelist. She is also a regular contributor of sharp criticism to such free-thinking American publications as Artforum, and however good her stories and sparkling her prose, she has other aims in her novel too. Its subject is inequality – economic, social, sexual – but the art world, with its attendant performances, is&hellip
The White Review No.8 launch, Foyles
The second launch event for The White Review No. 8 will be taking place at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, on Thursday 22 August from 6.30-8.30pm. ‘Writing by women simply isn’t read, received, or written about in the way writing by men is,’ writes Lauren Elkin in her essay ‘Barking from the Margins: on écriture féminine’, featured in The White Review No. 8. To mark the launch, Lauren will be in conversation with Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered: A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell,&hellip
Margaret Atwood, Southbank Centre
Margaret Atwood discusses the hugely-anticipated final novel in her dystopian trilogy. A man-made plague has swept the earth but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Told with wit, dizzying imagination and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam is unpredictable, chilling and hilarious. It takes us further into a challenging dystopian world and holds up a skewed mirror to our own possible future. This novel completes the trilogy which began with Oryx&hellip
The Hatchards Bloomsbury Book Club with Margaret Atwood at the Bloomsbury Institute
Margaret Atwood will be at the Bloomsbury Institute to talk about MaddAddam, the hugely-anticipated final novel in the dystopian trilogy that began with Oryx and Crakeand The Year of the Flood. In a little enclave called the cob house a motley crew of survivors live alongside the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle, inquisitive species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, a member of the now-defunct Gods Gardeners, knows about mushrooms, poultices and bees, and is still in love with Zeb. The Crakers’ reluctant prophet, Snowman&hellip
Teju Cole talks to Max Liu, LRB
On a rare visit to London, New York-Lagos writer Teju Cole will be at the bookshop to talk about his work. His novel Open City, the narrative of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist as he walks around New York and, briefly, Brussels, has received unalloyed praise, won the PEN/Hemingway award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize and the National Book Critics Circle award. James Wood has called it “Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original… ”, and Colm Tóibín wrote of it, “The&hellip
Jilted Generation with Ed Howker and Shiv Malik, Southbank
Ed Howker and Shiv Malik discuss the Jilted Generation, the millions of young people in Britain who face an uncertain future. In the fifties, Britain was told we’d ‘never had it so good’. In the 1990s, ‘things’ could ‘only get better’. Today, things are actually getting worse. Why? Standards of living are falling for new generations. Young people in Britain are unemployed and homeless on an unprecedented scale – the unwitting victims of policy errors going back decades. Jilted Generation looks again&hellip