Talks

It's 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. So how does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery? In his captivating debut novel, The Secret […]

One family, four decades, four funerals, one unfulfilled promise. Winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, Damon Galgut joins us to discuss his masterpiece The Promise, a gripping, beautifully written family saga based around a farm in South Africa. Through the members of the Swart family, Damon explores personal and political change as the family splinters and […]

The bestselling and much-loved author of Brick Lane, Monica Ali visits MLF to celebrate her brilliant new novel Love Marriage, her first book in a decade. Yasmin’s engaged to fellow Junior Doctor Joe, but when they bring the two families together – one love-matched, long-married Bengali immigrants who thrive on home cooking and the other a single white […]

Award-winning BBC broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake brings a defibrillator to our ailing ability to connect through conversation. In Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations, Nihal considers what’s happened to discourse, both public and private, over recent years. How Brexit, lockdown and social media have led to division, monologues, and a lack of in-person discussions. Through skills honed by […]

At first glance, it seems unlikely that the white English Victorian writer Charles Dickens and the Black American musician Prince Rogers Nelson have anything in common. But as two of Nick Hornby’s ‘artists who have shaped me, inspired me, made me think about my own work’ he set out to see whether there was anything […]

With Moniza Alvi, Romalyn Ante, Rebecca Goss, Ian Humphreys & Carola Luther One of the most dynamic and admired American writers of the 20th Century, Sylvia Plath’s legacy as a fiercely intelligent, confessional feminist poet and novelist continues to inspire generation after generation. After Sylvia: Poems & Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath marks the 90th anniversary […]

‘“Is it true?” Gaspar had asked. “Is it true that the dead travel fast?” His father had finally looked up and said, simply: “Some do.”’ Argentinian mistress of dark literature, Mariana Enriquez joins us in Manchester to discuss her superb, brutal novel Our Share of Night (translated by Megan McDowell). Gaspar is six years old when the […]

Piranesi lives in the House. Having no memory of how he arrived or even who he is, Piranesi keeps careful records of the labyrinth of halls, the many statues and the weather. Once a week he meets his friend the Other, but he has no contact with any other living person until someone begins to […]

Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes’ latest feminist mythological retelling, is the story of how a young woman became a monster. And how she was never really a monster at all. It’s the story of Medusa, the mortal raised by her Gorgon sisters, mistreated by Poseidon, and hunted by Perseus. It’s a version that sheds light on […]

‘The best short story writer in English – not “one of”, not “arguably”, but the best’ – Time. In his latest short story collection, Liberation Day, George Saunders considers what it means to be human and a member of communities whose actions impact each other. Through inventive scenarios including an underground amusement park and a household […]

Male beauty vlogging is flourishing in China despite fears of a masculinity ‘crisis’, sissyphobia and LGBT crackdowns. Key questions arise: To what extent does male beauty vlogging challenge the notion of a crisis of masculinity and offer new, positive gender expressions for men? To what extent does it reinforce hierarchical and oppressive formations of gender […]