kerplunkk // cunning linguism

Dressed in black and based in the US, Neil Gaiman has, in the past decade, become an author hero among readers of all ages, including the 1.8 million who follow him on Twitter. In prize-winning, best-selling novels including Coraline, Neverwhere, American Gods and The Graveyard Book, he combines the everyday and the other-worldly, drawing on sources from English folklore, science fiction, fantasy, horror and fairytales to rock music and the Midrash. An element of enchantment runs through all his work. To mark the publication of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, an unsettling and very personal fable about memory, magic and survival, he is making one public appearance in London. Interviewed by the Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead, he reflects on the boundaries between children's and adult literature; the appeal of working in multiple forms - such as comics, picture books and screenplays; the writers - from Kipling to Edgar Allan Poe - who have most influenced him; and the lure of darkness.

The Guardian  is media partner for this event.

Neil Gaiman in conversation with Claire Armitstead: June 2013

Jonathan Swift: Work in Progress (Victoria Glendinning)

A.S. Byatt

Former poet laureate, D.J. Enright and Nobel prize winner, Harold Pinter read from their works and are inducted into the Companionship of Literature by Lord Roy Jenkins.

Harold Pinter and D.J.Enright

Lou Reed at the Kelly Writers House. Background, transcript, and more here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/11/lou-reed-anthony-decurtis-interview/

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Lou Reed on Laurie Anderson

For nearly 50 years, the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch wrote prolifically, establishing herself as one of the great British fiction writers of the twentieth century. Novelists A.S. Byatt, Bidisha and Philip Hensher, all of them powerfully influenced by Iris Murdoch, reconsider her standing as a writer. Chaired by Anne Chisholm.

Iris Murdoch Revisited (A.S. Byatt, Bidisha, Philip Hensher)

Margaret Atwood began writing poetry in high school, and the most thrilling moment of her writing career was the publication of her first poem: ‘I mean, all the other things that have happened since then were a thrill, but that was the biggest.’ She has gone on to publish 19 collections of poetry, as well as 14 novels – including 'The Handmaid’s Tale', 'The Blind Assassin' and 'MaddAddam', published last summer. Organised and methodical in writing fiction, she writes poetry ‘in a state of free float’, very often in hotel rooms or on planes. Her poems tend to begin with a cluster of words, around which they form – she has compared the process to ‘dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation’ – and sometimes they result in novels. In a conversation with Peter Kemp, Chief Fiction Reviewer of the Sunday Times, Atwood talks about how she believes that poetry and fiction use different parts of the brain, explains how poems can open doors into rooms which novels then enter and explore, and reads from her work.

We are grateful to the Canadian High Commission in the UK for hosting this event at Canada House. We are grateful to the TLS for supporting this event.

Margaret Atwood reads her poetry

Music for theater by Oliver Augst
directed by Heike Scharpff
first performance: 2013, Basis, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Mapping Susan Sontag

Background and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/07/02/patti-smith-jack-kerouac-last-hotel/

DETAILS / POEM TEXT

Patti Smith reads Jack Kerouac's "The Last Hotel"

Man Booker shortlisted author Amitav Ghosh discusses his keenly awaited River of Smoke with Orange Prize-winning novelist Linda Grant. Chaired by Colin Thubron.

Amitav Ghosh in conversation with Linda Grant

Alan Judd discusses why is spy-writing is such a very British affair. Chaired by Simon Winder.

Nobody does it better: the British spy in fiction (Alan Judd)

In this talk, she asks how Eliot tested  a variety of lives in his masterpiece, Four Quartets. How do writers, or risk-takers like his ancestor Andrew Eliot, or Londoners during the Blitz, or members of a religious community, hold up against Eliot's pattern of the perfect life: 'a lifetime burning in every moment'?

TS Eliot and the search for perfection (Lyndall Gordon)

Originality in science is synonymous with being first; originality in the arts is somewhat different.  At what point do these two creative endeavours overlap?

Originality (Ian McEwan)

Prize-winning novelist, poet and critic Amit Chaudhuri explores Tagore's constant struggle to refashion himself, both as an unacknowledged modernist, who was often in disagreement with European modernism, and as a nationalist who distrusted nationalism and privileged daydreams. Sunetra Gupta, novelist and Oxford epidemiologist, reads from Tagore's work.  Chaired by Peter Parker.

Tagore: the Contradictions of the Modern (Amit Chaudhuri, Sunetra Gupta)

On the eve of Milton's 400th birthday, Claire Tomalin and Philip Pullman talk about why, for them, Milton's poetry has never lost its magic.

Milton: Where Joy Forever Dwells (Philip Pullman, Claire Tomalin)

http://www.92Y.org/VPC - Sontag reads her appreciation of Lincoln Kirstein, an excerpt from one of her essays on Wagner and something from “AIDS and Its Metaphors,” which at the time was still very much a work-in-progress. Hardwick reads some selections from her writing on New York City and ended with a longer piece on Dorothy Wordsworth. Recorded April 11, 1988 at 92nd Street Y.

Susan Sontag and Elizabeth Hardwick | 92Y Readings

Sir Simon Rattle zum Tode von Hans Werner Henze

Romesh Gunesekera and Michael Morpurgo talk about the influences that lured them into storytelling and ask questions about characters, plots and readership.  Chaired by critic and writer Nicolette Jones.

Who Needs Stories? (Michael Morpurgo, Romesh Gunesekera)

Margaret Atwood and Sir Brian Hoskins discuss their concerns for the planet anf their thoughts on producing and conserving energy in a conversation chaired by Gabrielle Walker.  An event hosted jointly by the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society.

A Problem Shared (Margaret Atwood, Sir Brian Hoskins)

Susan Hill and Sarah Waters discuss the seduction of the supernatural in a conversation interspersed with readings from their work.  Chaired by novelist Philip Hensher.

kerplunkk // cunning linguism

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