Live & in person
Every date we've recorded since January, and every date still to come. Each upcoming event counts down to its start time and moves itself into the archive below the moment it begins.
Upcoming
25 dates announced
Live recordingUpcomingHalf of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006
with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
Our season-four opener: Adichie on the discarded narrator of Half of a Yellow Sun and the memoirs she read until she stopped being frightened.
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In conversationUpcomingThe Blind Assassin · McClelland & Stewart, 2000
with Margaret Atwood — Novelist & poet
Booker Prize, 2000
Atwood on six decades of bad first pages, and why she stopped waiting for a good mood some time in the 1970s.
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In conversationUpcomingThe Remains of the Day · Faber & Faber, 1989
with Kazuo Ishiguro — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
Ishiguro reconstructs the month in 1987 when he answered no letters and no telephone calls, hour by hour.
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In conversationUpcomingFlights · Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2007
with Olga Tokarczuk — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
Tokarczuk and her translator argue in public about three fragments, with the audience voting on each one.
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WorkshopUpcomingThe Underground Railroad · Doubleday, 2016
with Colson Whitehead — Novelist
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
A two-hour session on rationing research, timing your own readiness, and structure as a map of genres.
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Reading & Q&AUpcomingGirl, Woman, Other · Hamish Hamilton, 2019
with Bernardine Evaristo — Novelist & professor
Booker Prize, 2019
Evaristo performs three of the twelve narrators of Girl, Woman, Other and explains where the punctuation went.
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WorkshopUpcomingOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Penguin Press, 2019
with Ocean Vuong — Poet & novelist
MacArthur Fellowship, 2019
Vuong on writing prose at the pace of poetry, and refusing to apologise for it.
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Festival stageUpcomingHalf of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006
with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
Our first West African recording: an open-air conversation about complication as a moral argument.
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Live recordingUpcomingPachinko · Grand Central, 2017
with Min Jin Lee — Novelist
National Book Award finalist, 2017
Min Jin Lee on the draft she abandoned in her forties, and the Tokyo interviews that told her whose story it was.
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In conversationUpcomingFlights · Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2007
with Olga Tokarczuk — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
What clinical training leaves in a novelist: standing inside someone's reasoning long enough to describe it without mockery.
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In conversationUpcomingThe Underground Railroad · Doubleday, 2016
with Colson Whitehead — Novelist
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
How to research atrocity and stay functional: mornings only, notes not immersion, bad television afterwards.
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Reading & Q&AUpcomingThe Blind Assassin · McClelland & Stewart, 2000
with Margaret Atwood — Novelist & poet
Booker Prize, 2000
Atwood reads from The Blind Assassin and takes questions on what a prize does and doesn't change.
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Live recordingUpcomingGirl, Woman, Other · Hamish Hamilton, 2019
with Bernardine Evaristo — Novelist & professor
Booker Prize, 2019
Forty years of building a career instead of waiting to be discovered — and what the Booker did at sixty.
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Reading & Q&AUpcomingOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Penguin Press, 2019
with Ocean Vuong — Poet & novelist
MacArthur Fellowship, 2019
Vuong reads the nail-salon chapter and talks about writing towards a reader you can never reach.
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WorkshopUpcomingThe Remains of the Day · Faber & Faber, 1989
with Kazuo Ishiguro — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
Ishiguro on what writing lyrics taught him about first-person restraint, with exercises for prose writers.
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In conversationUpcomingPachinko · Grand Central, 2017
with Min Jin Lee — Novelist
National Book Award finalist, 2017
On over-reporting, historical invisibility, and making a reader in Ohio grieve for a market stallholder in Osaka.
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In conversationUpcomingThe Remains of the Day · Faber & Faber, 1989
with Kazuo Ishiguro — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
Ishiguro on narrators who misunderstand the world on purpose, and how much a reader should be told.
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Live recordingUpcomingThe Underground Railroad · Doubleday, 2016
with Colson Whitehead — Novelist
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
Switching register between horror, satire and crime — and why he refuses to write the same book twice.
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Reading & Q&AUpcomingOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Penguin Press, 2019
with Ocean Vuong — Poet & novelist
MacArthur Fellowship, 2019
A full reading with three new poems, followed by an open mic for anyone under twenty.
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In conversationUpcomingFlights · Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2007
with Olga Tokarczuk — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
Seven years of research, page numbers that count down, and what a novel owes a historical record.
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Live recordingUpcomingHalf of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006
with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
A full-length live interview on the novel's afterlife, its critics, and the letters that still arrive.
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WorkshopUpcomingGirl, Woman, Other · Hamish Hamilton, 2019
with Bernardine Evaristo — Novelist & professor
Booker Prize, 2019
Building a body of work without permission: form experiments, self-production and the long game.
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Awards nightUpcomingPachinko · Grand Central, 2017
with Min Jin Lee — Novelist
National Book Award finalist, 2017
Our listener-voted awards, with readings from every prize-winning guest of season four.
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In conversationUpcomingThe Blind Assassin · McClelland & Stewart, 2000
with Margaret Atwood — Novelist & poet
Booker Prize, 2000
Sixty listeners, one notebook, and three hours on revision, contracts and staying curious.
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Live recordingUpcomingThe Remains of the Day · Faber & Faber, 1989
with Kazuo Ishiguro — Novelist, Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
Three guests, one stage, and the first announcement of who we're recording with in January.
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The archive
1 events recorded
In conversationPast eventHalf of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006
with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist
Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
A small online session: one chapter read aloud, then half an hour of questions in the chat.
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