Upcoming Events.
DAMIAN BARR'S LITERARY SALON AT EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Damian will be hosting a Salon at Edinburgh International Book Festival! Join him for an evening of lively discussion, readings, and performance as he brings together some very special guests for this Edinburgh edition of the Salon. Damian will be joined by Monica Heisey, and more guests.
Bibliotherapy With Ella Berthoud
July is often a time to escape to holiday destinations, whether it's to a beloved field in Ireland, tent and dogs with you in the car, or to some exotic location half way across the globe. Some of our favourite books are set on holiday, describing romances, accidents, murders, revelations or world events intruding on the holiday bubble.
Bibliotherapy With Ella Berthoud: Music In Literature
Some novels are almost literally music, some describe music so well that you can hear it in your head, and some explain what it's like to be a musician with notes bursting out of your head and fingers in harmony or discord. In this bibliotherapy session Ella Berthoud will look at music in fiction, from the composer in Thomas Mann’s 'Doctor Faustus', to the rock band in 'Daisy Jones and the Six'. Taking in the turn of the century New York music scene in Doctorow’s 'Ragtime', the profound quality of music to move and overcome cultural barriers in Ann Patchett’s 'Bel Canto', to Ishiguro’s Nocturnes and the complexities of living as a professional musician in Vikram Seth’s 'An Equal Music'.
How do novels manage to conjure music? Do you need to be musical to appreciate these novels? If you lived on a desert island, would these novels replace the music you have lost? Join Ella and bring your own literary musical musings to the session.
Salon at The London Library: Monica Heisey and a world premiere from Jenni Fagan. Hosted by Damian Barr.
We’re back in person and online for our first Salon of 2023! With two bold and brilliant writers.
Every story starts with a writer alchemising their own experience. Whether it’s a memoir or epic fiction, the truth of the writer is in there somewhere. Join us as we explore two equally superb, but wildly different, books where the writer uses their own story to powerful effect.
'Really Good, Actually' is Monica Heisey’s debut novel. Her heroine is Maggie, 29, who manages to get divorced before most of her friends have even considered getting married. And her marriage ended just 608 days after it started. Sure, she’s alone for the first time in her life, can’t afford her rent and her obscure PhD is going nowhere . . . but she’s fine – she’s doing really good, actually. Like Maggie, Monica is a ‘Surprisingly Young Divorcée TM’. Here she uses fiction to tell a bigger truth than her own. Monica has contributed to The New Yorker, the New York Times, Vogue and the Guardian. And she’s written on shows including Schitt’s Creek!
We are honoured to bring you the world premiere of the long-awaited memoir by the award-winning, genre-bending genius Jenni Fagan. 'Ootlin' has been twenty years and a lifetime in the making. Jenni takes us on her journey through the broken care system from birth to the age of 16. It is a story of loss, love and longing. Of trying to find your way and finding your place in an often-hostile world. It is a story about the stories we tell ourselves of ourselves. It is powerfully alive and heart-breaking and ultimately hopeful because Jenni’s story lives in every page she’s ever written. 'Ootlin' is sure to be a classic.
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