Small Wonder: THE short story festival. 24-27 September 2009
Sunday 27 September
Literary Lifelines Start: 12pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
Amit Chaudhuri, Helen Dunmore and A.L. Kennedy read stories commissioned by Amnesty International, to mark sixty years since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which appear in an enthralling new anthology, Freedom. Amit Chaudhuri's fifth novel, The Immortals, was published this year. He is also an acclaimed musician. Helen Dunmore is an Orange Prize-winning novelist; her latest book is Counting the Stars. A.L. Kennedy won the Costa Prize for her novel, Day, and is one of our most accomplished writers of short stories. Her new collection, What Becomes, has just been published.
Mistress of Misrule Start: 2pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
Beryl Bainbridge has achieved the rare distinction of enjoying critical acclaim whilst also being one of our most popular novelists. A sharp observer of human folly, her work (including seventeen novels, two travel books, five plays and a short story collection), is characterised by sardonic and macabre wit. Her innumerable prizes include the Whitbread Novel of the Year Prize (twice) and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award. Her most recent novel is According to Queeney. As a writer of spare prose, she is also drawn to short stories.
Chicago Start: 4pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the original speakers for this event are not able to appear. However, we are delighted to announce a unique appearance by writers Neil Steinberg and John Freeman who join us direct from the U.S. for a fascinating conversation about the impact of crime and corruption on Chicago’s literary and cultural life and ways in which the city has been enriched by immigrants from around the world. An insiders’ view of the vibrant home of Saul Bellow, Al Capone and Frank Lloyd Wright. Neil Steinberg is a columnist of the Chicago Sun-Times and the author of Hatless Jack and Drunkard. John Freeman is the acting editor of Granta. He is an international critic and the author of The Tyranny of E-Mail.
From Myths to Magnum Opus Start: 6pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
A rare appearance by Michel Faber, one of our masters of modern fiction, whose work spans short stories, novellas and the bestselling blockbuster, The Crimson Petal and the White. He has won several short story awards and has been described as a writer whose 'bold fiction has made a permanent mark, its incandescence handled with brilliance' (The Scotsman). His latest novella, The Fire Gospel, is a loose re-telling of the Prometheus myth. It describes, with typical verve, the incendiary consequences of the discovery of the fifth Gospel in a looted museum in Iraq.
Beckett Start: 8pm • Tickets: £9 (£8 Students)
Samuel Beckett's Not I is an intense monologue always staged in a pitch black space lit by a single beam of light. The most difficult of Beckett's works to perform, the legendary Billie Whitelaw described it as 'falling backwards into hell, omitting screams'. Mentored by Whitelaw – 'I am passing the baton on to her. I have given her all the notes that Sam gave me' - Lisa Dwan gives us a flavour of her own critically acclaimed performances and discusses Not I, including filmed extracts, with Beckett’s friend and biographer Jim Knowlson and Dr Keston Sutherland.