Lucy Hawking - pt2

Loud Poets Grand Slam Final The highly anticipated Loud Poets Grand Slam Final promises to be a festival highlight, combining music with fist-thumping, side-tickling poetry. Having qualified through a series of Scotland-wide Slams, 12 poets compete for a £3,000 prize and the coveted… Tara June Winch: The Blood in Your Words Tara June Winch’s third novel The Yield begins with an invitation for the reader to take language into their mouths, to savour rolling the letters around and the sound that they produce: ‘I was born on Ngurambang,’ Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi says. ‘– can… Chris Brookmyre: One Island, Seven Secrets How much can really go wrong at a hen party? Bride-to-be Jen is about to find out. A private island provides a getaway for the celebrations, but it quickly becomes the backdrop to chaos, a disappearance and an anonymous blackmailer demanding that one of… Jura Unbound: Literary Death Match (2013 event) Four talented author-illustrator teams pit their live storytelling skills against one another in this all-star cartoon caper version of the legendary Literary Death Match… Eva Baltasar & Lina Meruane: Body Politics Rebecca Solnit has argued that ‘every illness is narrative’ and Lina Meruane’s novel Nervous System certainly gives credence to that view. It centres on a woman named Ella who, in struggling to finish her PhD, becomes fixated on the functions and rhythms… Oana Aristide & Courttia Newland: New World Disorder One interesting product of dystopian fiction is the new perspective it offers on the real world we are living in. That is the case in the novels discussed today. Oana Aristide’s Under the Blue was written before the pandemic hit but with uncanny timing it… Lucy Caldwell & Louise Kennedy: Belfast in the Blood Meet two authors of novels about life in an extraordinary city. In Lucy Caldwell’s These Days, it’s 1941 and Belfast has escaped the worst of the war, until the Blitz brings devastation. Now, two sisters must find a way to carry on. Louise Kennedy’s… Christopher de Bellaigue: A Life That Changed History In over 600 years of Ottoman rule, the longest-reigning sultan was Suleiman the Magnificent. The Lion House by Christopher de Bellaigue narrates the epic tale of Suleiman’s rise to become the most powerful man of the 16th century. Fans of Hilary Mantel… Colson Whitehead talks to Kirsty Wark at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Following the success of his book The Underground Railroad – named by Barack Obama as one of the most important books of his presidency – Colson Whitehead's new novel The Nickel Boys sees the Pulitzer Prize winning author visit 1960s Florida, a period of… George Monbiot - pt3 Passionate campaigner for environmental and social change, George Monbiot gives us practical, powerful solutions on a global scale of how to prevent further destruction of our planet through climate change in this 2007 event. The video of this event is…