Saturday 24 September

Something Was There
With Naomi Alderman, Kate Clanchy and Sarah Waters

12 noon • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)*
The new Asham Anthology, published for the first time by Virago, contains stories by commissioned writers and competition winners which take their cue from Sarah Waters' ghostly novel, The Little Stranger. A judge of this year's bi-annual national short story competition for new women writers, she will reveal a story that she feels exemplifies the art of short fiction. Writers Naomi Alderman and Kate Clanchy read their commissioned stories for Something Was There and discuss responses to the gothic theme with Lennie Goodings, Publisher of Virago.

Supported by the Dept. of English & Creative Writing, University of Chichester

New Ways With Words
With Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer and Tessa Hadley

2pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
The BBC National Short Story Award results in a Radio 4 broadcast and a publication for the winners. Three of this year's judges, Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer and Tessa Hadley, read their own stories and discuss modern modes of experiencing short fiction with Di Speirs, BBC Editor of Readings. Joe Dunthorne's new novel, Wild Abandon, is just published; his first, Submarine, was made into a film. Geoff Dyer is a prolific and award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. Tessa Hadley's latest book is The London Train.

Supported by the Folio Society

Perfect Lives?
Sarah Hall and Polly Samson

4pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
Sarah Hall's and Polly Samson's short stories are exquisite examples of the craft: they take one on a journey, contain revelations, suggest a great deal, yet are kept in check. In Sarah Hall's new collection, The Beautiful Indifference, the human body provides a sensuous frame for each unfolding drama. Asham judge Polly Samson's linked collection, Perfect Lives, is a subtle and complex human comedy, told with a deceptively light touch. Her previous collection was Lying in Bed. Sarah Hall was short-listed for the Booker Prize for The Electric Michelangelo.

The Doll
With Polly Samson, Anthony Quinn and Daisy Goodwin

6pm • £9 (£8 Students)
Daphne du Maurier's short stories are amongst her most haunting works. Two became classic films - Hitchcock's The Birds and Roeg's Don't Look Now. Recently unearthed early stories published in a new collection, The Doll, provide a fascinating glimpse into her development as an author. Polly Samson wrote the introduction to The Doll. She discusses themes of obsession, sexual desire and failures of communication between the sexes in Daphne du Maurier's work and the screen adaptations with Anthony Quinn, film critic of the Independent and novelist (Half of the Human Race) and Daisy Goodwin, novelist (My Last Duchess), T.V. producer and presenter, poetry editor and Orange Prize chair.

Mrs Dalloway's Party
With Emma Fielding and Juliet Stevenson

8pm • £12 (£10 Students)
Mrs Dalloway's Party is a lost gem, Virginia Woolf's forgotten short story sequence written during the same period as her famous novel, Mrs Dalloway, and drawing on her own fascination with parties and the heightened emotions they inspire. Each story offers an insight into its protagonist's innermost thoughts and each depicts the intriguing social world Woolf inhabited. Tonight, following a short introduction by Di Speirs, BBC Editor of Readings, we hear two of Britain's most celebrated actors, Emma Fielding and Juliet Stevenson, read Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street and The New Dress.