Literature

Three of the most exciting voices on publisher Faber’s poetry list read from their latest collections. Kunial’s England’s Green was shortlisted for the 2023 TS Eliot Prize; its poems find the true and the timeless in the lived everyday and invite the reader to look again at the places and the language that we think we know. Laird’s Up Late is a powerful collection reflecting on the strange and chaotic times we live in; it contains a sequence meditating on a father’s dying, which won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Sullivan, who won the TS Eliot Prize in 2019 for her debut Three Poems, performs from Was it for This, an exhilarating exploration of the ways in which we attempt to map our lives in space and time.

Dublin poet and playwright Stephen James Smith presents an evening of vibrant spoken word. Smith’s poetry videos have amassed over 2.5 million views, and his short film My Ireland, a companion to a poem of the same name he wrote as a commission for St Patrick’s Festival, was screened at the London Film Festival.

Drawing on over a decade of archival research, Rebecca N Mitchell, professor of Victorian literature and culture at the University of Birmingham, shows that the effortless wit and writing of Wilde – often chided by detractors for being indolent and egotistical – was actually the product of studious and carefully concealed labour. Mitchell takes a look at the manuscript evidence which shows that he worked tirelessly at his craft, filling notebooks with drafts and carefully revising his bon mots.

Join novelist Aleksandar Hemon and musician Damir Imamović for an exciting cross-genre collaboration. Widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, Hemon’s latest novel The World and All That It Holds is an engrossing, moving epic taking readers from Sarajevo to Shanghai and across a century of tumultuous history. He is joined by fellow Sarajevan Damir Imamović, celebrated Sevdah artist (Sevdah is a form of ‘Bosnian blues’; it literally means ‘beautiful sadness’) who will perform from his new Smithsonian Folkways album, inspired by and forming a rich soundtrack to The World and All That It Holds. An unmissable hour of words and music.

Put your questions about all things writing and publishing to an expert panel of publishers, authors and journalists, introduced by Cyhoeddi Cymru Publishing Wales and chaired by a media personality to be announced. The panel explores the challenges and opportunities facing Wales’ publishing sector, discusses Welsh identity and the growth of the Welsh language, multiculturism and diversity, and looks at how we can put Welsh publishing on the global map.

Get an insight into the world of publishing with Rebecca F Kuang’s highly anticipated satirical thriller Yellowface, in which a woman watches her frenemy – and super successful author – Athena Liu die…and then steals her manuscript and publishes it under her own name. Kuang discusses skewering the publishing industry, trial by social media, toxic friendships and the co-option of identity politics, and whether any of her characters are taken from real life. Yellowface is Kuang’s first adult contemporary novel; her fantasy epic Babel, which drew on her experiences as a translator and an Oxford graduate, was a New York Times bestseller.

Author and Leonard Cohen devotee Philippe Sands (East West Street, The Last Colony) speaks to renowned singer and writer Sharon Robinson, the most prolific co-writer of songs with Cohen. As well as being Cohen’s frequent writing collaborator, Robinson has written songs for a number of other artists including the Pointer Sisters, Aaron Neville, Brenda Russell, Diana Ross, Don Henley, Michael Bolton, Randy Crawford, Patti LaBelle, Roberta Flack, the Temptations and Bettye LaVette.

Twitter’s unofficial poet laureate Brian Bilston presents an hour of poetry and laughter as he reads from work including his latest book Days Like These. Expect poems that will take the blues out of Monday, flatten the Wednesday hump and amplify that Friday feeling, from January through to December.

What would we think if we saw the wonderful things around us without our cultural filters? And how would we behave? In Do Not Call The Tortoise our own Festival Bookseller, Gareth Howell-Jones, explores these questions with essays on ignorance, Darwin, Coleridge, cats and even, rather daringly, the meaning of life. He discovers a radical, fresh perspective called STA, an attempt to see the wonders around us without our cultural preconceptions. “I am a great believer in STA. It is more than a book and has enriched my life deeply” – Max Porter. Gareth will be talking to Horatio Clare, author of Heavy Light: A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing and The Light in the Dark.

Find out how master storyteller Kingsolver reimagined Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield for her new novel, placing her version in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Demon Copperhead, who gives the book its title, is born to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, in an area where poverty is all around, and the opioid crisis is striking neighbours, parents and friends. Demon craves affection and safety – and a glimpse of the ocean – and his tale of love and loss shows just how he’ll travel to try and get there. Kingsolver has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2010 won what is now the Women’s Prize for fiction for her novel The Lacuna.

There will not be a book signing after this event.

Go behind the scenes of the justice system with three insiders who have seen the best and worst the judiciary has to offer. Joseph was the only woman judge at the Old Bailey Bench from 2012 until her retirement this year, writes about how the juridic system is failing people in her book Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder – Trials at the Old Bailey. Sands is a writer and lawyer whose latest book The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy is the story of Liseby Elysé, a victim of British colonialism when the country deported the people of Diego García, in Chagos Archipelago. Lady Hale formerly served as president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, a career described in her autobiography, Spider Woman: A Life. They talk to lawyer and human rights advocate Baroness Helena Kennedy.

Some of the biggest names in fiction have featured on the prestigious Granta magazine Best of Young British Novelists’ lists, from Zadie Smith and Kazuo Ishiguro to Salman Rushdie and Rose Tremain. Three writers from the fifth iteration of the list, announced on 13 April, take part in a riveting conversation with psychotherapist Maxine Mei-Fung Chung on the writing process, today’s publishing landscape and what it feels like to be nominated as a voice of a generation.

The poet discusses his deeply humane and brutally hilarious boyhood memoir Toy Fights with broadcaster and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor. Born in Dundee, Paterson spent his boyhood on a council housing estate, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights and obsessing over everything from origami to sex and Scottish football cards. The first 20 years of his life – for better or worse – shaped who he would become. His story is one of family, money and music, as well as schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class. Paterson has won some of the country’s most prestigious poetry prizes, and spent 25 years as a poetry editor.

Former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and instrumentalist John Sampson join forces for a unique event of words and music. Duffy performs some of her much-loved poems as well as new work, interspersed with musical interludes by Sampson, a multi-instrumentalist who plays the trumpet, recorders and a plethora of early and obscure wind instruments such as the crumhorn, gemshorn, and cornettino. Duffy and Sampson have collaborated for 20 years, playing venues including Buckingham Palace.

Creativity lies at the heart of our response to the climate crisis. Owen Sheers, Swansea University’s professor in creativity and Co-founder of Black Mountains College, recently curated Everything Change, a series of events about creativity and the climate crisis. He is joined by three of Wales’s most dynamic new writers – novelist Alys Conran, poet Marvin Thompson and singer, comedian and actor Carys Eleri – as they share the work they created in response and discuss the role of the writer and artist in addressing the challenges of the climate and ecological emergencies.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Books, books and more books: Robin Ince’s quest to discover just why he can never have enough books is one familiar to many a bookworm, and one he’s recorded in his book Bibliomaniac. Ince, co-presenter with Professor Brian Cox of the BBC Radio 4 show and podcast The Infinite Monkey Cage, shares anecdotes and tall tales from his tour of more than 100 bookshops, undertaken when the pandemic resulted in the cancellation of his stadium tour with Cox. From Wigtown to Penzance and Swansea to Margate, Ince talks to comedian Marcus Brigstocke about his epic journey, meeting book lovers and what he discovered about his own addiction to books.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.

Then Before is a sound installation devised by sound artist Wajid Yaseen. Poems are presented in a multi-speaker, immersive listening installation, realised and activated by narration, music, found-sound, foley and spatialisation – a form of ‘sound or sonic poetry’. Then Before uses a selection of poems by writers Alice Kemp (a poet informed by states of dream, disturbance, and subtle trance), Jack Underwood (curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and author of Happiness, A Year in the New Life), and Shamshad Khan (poet and resilience coach, author of Megalomaniac), sonified and with spatialisation by Yaseen.

Modus Arts have performed at the Arnolfini Bristol, ICA Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Whitechapel Gallery, Laban and the Freud Museum in London. Text–Sound–Art is a platform for exploring how poets and sound artists can work together to extend poetry into soundscape, and sound into wordscapes to create new meaning and enhance both disciplines.