Jonathan Shaw (Estados Unidos) nació fruto de la relación entre la leyenda del jazz Artie Shaw y la estrella de Hollywood Doris Dowling. Durante su adolescencia frecuentó a Charles Bukowski y entró en una espiral de delincuencia juvenil. A los 19 años viajó por Centroamérica y Sudamérica, donde vivió durante años. En 2008 publicó su primera novela, Narcisa, que pronto se convirtió en un libro de culto con una legión de fans entre los que se encuentran Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop y Jim Jarmusch. Recientemente publicada en México, la novela narra la pasional historia de amor entre Cigano, un ex-toxicómano, y Narcisa, una prostituta adicta a las drogas. Jonathan conversará con el editor y escritor Diego Rabasa.
Join the winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and author of Trash as he discusses his most recent book, the story of the changing relationship that develops between a boy and his new dog, Spider. Spider helps Tom manage things when his life at home and at school is spinning out of control and in return Tom gives Spider all the love and attention he needs. Both grow stronger as a result. Dog is a book about trust, standing up for yourself, and learning to love.
The British Isles are an archipelago made up of two large islands and 6,289 smaller ones. The nature writer meets all kinds of islanders, from nuns to puffins, from local legends to rare subspecies of vole, as he seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small island, and what it means to be an islander.
Barkham’s books include Coastlines, Badgerlands and The Butterfly Isles.
In the Arctic, White, a marine conservationist, shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for mussels in the dark cavities left behind at low tide; in China, he races the Silver Dragon, a 25-foot tidal bore that crashes 80 miles up the Qiantang River; in Chile and Scotland, he investigates the growth of tidal power generation; and in Panama and Venice, he delves into how the threat of sea level rise is changing human culture – the very old and very new. Tides combines lyrical prose, colourful adventure travel and provocative scientific inquiry into the elemental, mysterious paradox that keeps our planet’s waters in constant motion.
In the summer after leaving school, a young botanist sets out to fulfil a childhood dream –to find every species of orchid native to the British Isles. He has just a few months to complete his quest and it will require ingenuity, stamina and a large dose of luck. As he battles the vagaries of the British climate in his clapped-out car, feverishly chasing each emerging bloom, Bersweden takes the reader on a remarkable botanical journey.
For 150 years, canals were the high-tech water machines driving the industrial revolution. Amazing feats of engineering, they carried the rural into the city and the urban into the countryside, and changed the lives of everyone. Then, just when their purpose was extinguished by modern transport, they were saved from extinction and repurposed as a 'slow highways' network, a peaceful and countrywide haven from our too-busy age. Today, there are more boats on the canals than in their Victorian heyday. Writer and slow adventurer Jasper Winn spent a year exploring Britain's waterways along 1,000 miles of 'wet roads and water streets' where he discovered a world of wildlife corridors, underground adventures, the hardware of heritage and history, new boating communities, endurance kayak races and remote towpaths. Chaired by Mark Skipworth.
The Great Storm of 1987 is etched firmly into the national memory. Everyone who was there that night remembers how hurricane-force winds struck southern Britain without warning, claiming 18 lives, uprooting more than 15 million trees and reshaping the landscape for future generations. Thirty years on, the discovery of an old photograph inspires the author to make a journey into that landscape. Weaving her own memories and personal experiences with those of fishermen and lighthouse keepers, rough sleepers and refugees, she creates a unique portrait of this extraordinary event and a moving exploration of legacy and loss. Chaired by Corisande Albert.
