Literary Calendar
Events for March 10, 2014 through April 23, 2014
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International Women’s Day evening with Aminatta Forna
To celebrate International Women’s Day, the Bloomsbury Institute is partnering with the charity Womankind for an event honouring women around the world. Aminatta Forna, Orange Prize-shortlisted author, will discuss her novel The Memory of Love, set during the civil conflict in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002. She and a representative from the charity will discuss the current situation in Sierra Leone, twelve years since the end of the conflict and Womankind’s work with local women’s organisations in Sierra Leone and around the world.&hellip
Aminatta Forna at Bloomsbury Institute
To celebrate International Women’s Day, the Bloomsbury Institute is partnering with the charity Womankind for an event honouring women around the world. Aminatta Forna, Orange Prize-shortlisted author, will discuss her novel The Memory of Love, set during the Civil War in Sierra Leone in 1969. She and a representative from the charity will discuss the current situation in Sierra Leone, ten years since the end of the conflict and Womankind’s work with local women’s organisations in Sierra Leone and around the world. Womankind&hellip
Adam Foulds on In The Wolf’s Mouth, LRB
Adam Foulds’s latest novel, In The Wolf’s Mouth (Jonathan Cape), expands on the themes of violence, conflict and the distortions of history that have characterised his work since 2007’s The Broken Word. Set in Sicily as the Second World War moves into its endgame, the novel is a vivid study of the moral compromises and historical elisions forced on us by war and its aftermath. Adam will be in conversation with Andrew Motion, the former poet laureate, whose most recent&hellip
5×15: Bompas & Parr, Fiona Shaw (schedule allowing), Kirsty Wark, Emma Bridgewater
Bompas & Parr, Fiona Shaw (schedule allowing), Kirsty Wark, Emma Bridgewater at the Tabernacle. Book tickets/more information
An evening with Anita Shreve, Waterstone’s Piccadilly
The bestselling novelist will discuss her intense psychological mystery The Lives of Stella Bain with Viv Groskop. Book tickets/more information
Deborah Levy, Maggie O’Farrell and Susie Boyt talk to Lennie Goodings, Daunts
Some of today’s most notable women writers talk about which Virago Modern Classics continue to inspire them. Favourites include novels by Muriel Spark, Angela Carter, Barbara Comyns and Elizabeth Taylor. This is a unique opportunity to hear writers talk as readers, discussing the ways in which these enduring classics have influenced their work. Book tickets/more information
Adam Foulds, Rebecca Hunt and Evie Wyld talk to Edmund Gordon
In an industry which favours established names and where new writers struggle to get their voices heard, these young novelists have enjoyed astonishing success. Three writers of a talented new generation read from their books and discuss their work with a young literary critic. Book tickets/more information
A.L. Kennedy, David Constantine and Helen Simpson talk to K.J. Orr, Daunt Books
Short stories have never been more celebrated as a literary art form, or more popular with readers. Join us for an inspiring discussion of their merits and charm, and listen to a dazzling array of short story writers read their work. Witness just how much can be achieved in a short story – as Alice Munro said in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “Everything the story tells moves you in such a way that you feel you’re a different person&hellip
Damon Galgut with Patrick Gale, Kings Place
The South African writer Damon Galgut, shortlisted for the Booker Prize for The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room, talks about his new novel Arctic Summer. In this literary tour de force, the author evokes the life of E. M. Forster and his travels to India, exploring the mysterious alchemy of the creative process. Read all reviews for Arctic Summer. Patrick Gale’s most recent novels are Notes From an Exhibition, The Whole Day Through and A Perfectly Good Man. He is working on an original drama series for BBC2 and&hellip
Visual Editions at Ace Hotel Shoreditch
Dazed’s Stuart Hammond will be in conversation with local London residents and map makers author and poet Joe Dunthorne and novelist Adam Thirlwell. It’s all happening on Wednesday 2nd April, with doors and drinks at 18.30 and readings and conversation at 19.00 at Ace Hotel London
Kamila Shamsie, Southbank Centre
The launch event of Kamila Shamsie’s new novel A God in Every Stone. Named last year as one of Granta‘s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, Kamila Shamsie is the author of five works of fiction. Her most recent, Burnt Shadows, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction, and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Her new novel A God in Every Stone is a rich and vivid tale of friendship, injustice, love and betrayal set in India, France, England and Turkey. Exploring&hellip
Eleanor Catton in conversation with Robert Macfarlane, RSL
A special collaboration with the Royal Society of Literature and Intelligent Life magazine sees the return of Eleanor Catton to London for an exclusive event in which Robert Macfarlane, bestselling travel writer and Chair of the Man Booker Prize judges, will interview Catton for the first time. Read all reviews for The Luminaries Last October, Catton, a 28-year-old New Zealander, became the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize. Her epic 832-page murder-mystery The Luminaries (Granta Books), is set&hellip
Tim Parks on Teach Us to Sit Still, Kings Place
‘Just when the medical profession had given up on me and I on it, just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out: sit still, they said, and breathe. I sat still. I breathed. It seemed a tedious exercise at first, rather painful, not immediately effective. Eventually it proved so exciting, so transforming, physically and mentally, that I began to think my illness had been a stroke of&hellip
Donna Leon talks to Judith Flanders, Daunt’s Marylebone
A great crime writer on her latest superb Brunetti mystery. Judith Flanders is best known for her wonderful Victorian history books, Victorian London and The Invention of Murder, will be in conversation with Donna Leon. Judith’s new crime novel, Writer’s Block, has just been published. More information
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism: David Harvey and Owen Jones, LRB
In his new book, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Profile), David Harvey unravels the paradoxes at the heart of capitalism – its drive, for example, to accumulate capital beyond the means of investing it; its imperative to use labour-saving technologies that leave consumers bereft of adequate means of consumption; and its compulsion to exploit nature to the point of extinction. Such are the tensions that underpin the persistence of mass unemployment, the downward spirals of Europe and Japan, and China’s and India’s&hellip
The importance of science: Bill Bryson at the Royal Society
He has been given the President’s Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Bradford Washburn Award by the Museum of Science in Boston and has been made an honorary Fellow of the Kavli Institute of Particle Physics, the British Science Association and the Royal Society. Yet renowned author Bill Bryson claims to have been a terrible student of science in school. Join Bill as he speaks to Professor Jim Al-Khalili about his personal experiences and perspectives on science, from&hellip
Alan Johnson on This Boy, Daunt’s Marylebone
The former Home Secretary on his beautifully written memoir of a troubled but ultimately triumphant childhood in the 50′s and 60′s.  
Lara Feigel in conversation with Selina Hastings on The Love-Charm of Bombs, Daunt’s Marylebone
The bombs of the Second World War wrought terrible destruction on London, but they were also a ‘love-charm’ for the city’s inhabitants. Freed from the responsibilities of normal life, many Londoners succumbed to the thrill of wartime passion. In her extraordinary work – part history, part biography and part literary criticism – Lara Feigel describes the Second World War as experienced by five of the best writers of the day: Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and Henry&hellip
Danny Dorling with Ed Howker, Southbank Centre
Why are the British so obsessed with house prices? Housing was at the heart of the financial collapse, and our economy is now precariously reliant on the housing market. What does it mean for our future? Tracing how we got to our current crisis and how housing has come to reflect class and wealth in Britain, Danny Dorling’s new book All That Is Solid radically shows that the solution to our problems – rising homelessness, a generation priced out of home ownership&hellip
Canongate’s Letters Live, Southbank Centre
Letters Live celebrates the enduring power of literary correspondence. Inspired by To the Letter by Simon Garfield and Letters of Note by Shaun Usher, Letters Live celebrates letters. All reviews for To the Letter by Simon Garfield All reviews for Letters of Note by Shaun Usher From Virginia Woolf’s heart-breaking suicide letter to the recipe for drop scones sent by Queen Elizabeth II to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression ‘OMG’ in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi’s appeal to Hitler for calm; and from&hellip