London Literature Festival 2014

Hilary Mantel Kate Tempest Alice Oswald Slavoj Žižek Fahrenheit 451 William S Burroughs Night Maya Angelou Tribute Booker Prize Readings

30 September – 13 October

Welcome This autumn we celebrate the power of words to change the world.

Language, and our unique ability to communicate, is one of the most distinctive human attributes. Words help us to share emotion, express our point of view, fight injustice and develop democracy.

Maya Angelou

So come and join us as we welcome some of the world’s finest writers and performers: Hilary Mantel, Stephen Fry, Alice Oswald, Kate Tempest, John Cooper Clarke, Colm Tóibín, and Elif Shafak. We celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of William S Burroughs with an extravaganza that includes a specially commissioned cantata from Gavin Bryars and contemplate what a life without the power of the printed word might be like in a rehearsed reading of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451. We’ve also commissioned a new poem by Alice Oswald, Freedom Play by Craig Taylor and we welcome Paines Plough theatre company’s production of one hundred short plays from all over the United Kingdom: Come To Where I’m From. This, like many of our other events all over the site, is completely free.

Wherever you’re from, whether near or far, you can be assured of a warm welcome at Southbank Centre.

Jude Kelly Artistic Director James Runcie Head of Literature and the Spoken Word

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

‘What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like something is change it.

If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

Don’t complain.’

At the centre of this year’s London Literature Festival is a tribute to the writer Maya Angelou who died in May. She believed: ‘What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like something is change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.’ The passionate belief that the arts have the power to transform lives, and should be available to all, lies at the heart of everything we do.

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London Literature Festival Calendar 7pm

The Forward Prizes for Poetry

p.6

7.20pm Stephen Fry Live: More Fool Me

p.7

7.45pm StorySLAM:Live

p.8

8pm

p.8 FREE

Thursday 2 October 1pm

National Poetry Day Live p.9 FREE

6pm

The Pity

8.15pm Michael Donaghy – A Celebration

p.10

6.30pm Shami Chakrabarti

p.11

7pm

p.11

8.15pm Jonathan Powell – Talking to Terrorists

p.12

11am – Fun Palaces 6pm

p.13 FREE

12 noon The Poetry Butcher – 5pm

p.14 FREE

1pm – 5pm

Young Adult Literature Weekender

p.15

2pm

The Green Man

p.15 FREE

4pm

Eric Hazan on the French Revolution

p.16

6pm

Nature Writing: Helen Macdonald and Mark Cocker

p.16

7.30pm John Cooper Clarke

p.17

7.45pm Fahrenheit 451

p.18

7.45pm Freedom Play

p.19

Sunday 12 October

p.20

6.30pm Alice Oswald

p.32

p.13 FREE

7.30pm Southbank Centre First Look Book Club

p.33

7.45pm Writing from Prison

p.33

8.15pm Sheila Hancock

p.34

Young Adult Literature p.15 Weekender

2pm

Fahrenheit 451

p.18

3.30pm Freedom Play

p.19

Friday 10 October

5pm

p.18

5.30pm Friday Tonic

p.35 FREE

5.30pm Freedom Play

p.19

p.35 FREE

6pm

John Healy, John Hall, Nicholas Johnson

p.21

6pm – 10pm

Maya Angelou: A Celebration

p.22

7pm

Fahrenheit 451

Monday 6 October 6.15pm The Complete Works

p.23

7pm

p.24

Koestler Poetry Workshop

7.45pm Science Fiction – Home of the Literary Activist?

p.24

Tuesday 7 October

Saturday 4 October

6pm

The NAW Public Edit

p.25

7pm

Colm Tóibín: Nora Webster

p.25

7.30pm Slavoj Žižek

p.26

7.30pm Martin Parr

p.27

8.15pm Reflecting on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

p.28

Wednesday 8 October 11.30am Sir Ranulph Fiennes:

p.29

7pm

Nature Writing: Badgerlands

p.30

7pm

The SI Leeds Literary Prize Celebration

p.30 FREE

Agincourt

Come To Where I’m From

7.30pm Hilary Mantel

p.36

7.30pm Kate Tempest

p.37

7.45pm Hayward Preview: MIRRORCITY

p.38

10am – Come To Where I’m 8pm From

p.35 FREE

2pm

Danny Dorling: Inequality and the 1%

p.43

4pm

Explore Everything: Bradley Garrett

p.43

5pm

Penny Readings

p.44 FREE

6pm

Elif Shafak

p.45

6pm

Africa39 – Book Launch

p.46

8pm

Le Grand Meaulnes Translation Duel

p.46

Monday 13 October 7.30pm 2014 Man Booker Prize Readings

p.47

Saturday 11 October 10am – Come To Where I’m 8pm From

p.35 FREE

12 noon Do It Yourself Zine Day p.39 FREE – 4pm 2pm

How We Are: Vincent Deary

p.39

4pm

Josh Cohen: The Private Life

p.40

6pm

James Meek: Private Island

p.40

6pm

Writing as a Key to Creativity

p.40

7.30pm Language Is A Virus From Outer Space

p.41

7.45pm Jacqueline Rose: Women In Dark Times

p.42

Free throughout the festival 10am – The Debating Chamber p.48 FREE 11pm 11am – Tom Phillips: 8pm Illuminated Tweets

p.49 FREE

A selection of the events will be British Sign Language interpreted and speech to text transcribed. Look out for the symbols next to each event in this brochure.

7.45pm Polari: First Book Prize p.31 8pm

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Sunday Papers Live

1pm – 5pm

p.9

Friday 3 October Scratch Mixer

11am

11am – Fun Palaces 6pm

Wednesday 1 October

I Am Become Words: Poetry, Science and Transformation

Thursday 9 October

Sunday 5 October

Shared Reading: Tom Phillips’ A Humument

p.31

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Tuesday 30 September

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Tuesday 30 September

The Forward Prizes for Poetry 2014 The annual prize-giving ceremony for the Forward Prizes for Poetry These prestigious prizes celebrate the best of the year’s poetry, honouring exciting new voices alongside established stars.

This year’s awards ceremony promises to be particularly lively, with a richly varied shortlist featuring writers united only in their skill at communicating news from elsewhere – the frontlines of war, of love and of consciousness – powerfully and memorably.

The prize-giving ceremony is introduced by Jeremy Paxman, who chairs a distinguished Forward Prizes jury including poet Dannie Abse and musician Cerys Matthews.

The readings – by shortlisted poets and celebrated actors – are directed by Samuel West.

Wednesday 1 October

The evening, described by the Financial Times as the ‘bardic equivalent of the Oscars’, also marks the publication launch of The Forward Book of Poetry.

Presented by David Johnson & John Mackay with Penguin

7pm £12, £10*

A live event to mark the publication of Stephen Fry’s brand new volume of memoirs, More Fool Me. The Fry Chronicles was the biggest 2010 autobiography in the UK, selling over one million copies worldwide.

Get a sneak preview of the third volume: a heady tale of the late eighties and early nineties in which Stephen – driven to create, perform and entertain – burned bright and partied hard and damned the consequences...

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see the multi award-winning comedian, actor, presenter, writer and raconteur on stage live: when he’s forced to tour he’s a tour de force.

Each ticket includes a hardback copy of the new book (RRP £25.00) to be collected on the night. Please present your ticket in exchange for one book. No cash value.

Stephen is signing copies after the show.

For ages 14+ Royal Festival Hall 7.20pm £29.50*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Stephen Fry Live: More Fool Me

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Wednesday 1 October

StorySLAM:Live

I Am Become Words: Poetry, Science and Transformation

7.45pm £8*

Simon Barraclough is Poet in Residence at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory; Dorothy Lehane is curator of the Poetry Meets Biomedical Science project; and Kelley Swain is editor of Pocket Horizon, an anthology of poems written about history of science objects.

The Saison Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall 8pm Free but booking essential.

To book your place email specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk

Thursday 2 October

National Poetry Day Live Southbank Centre and The Poetry Society team up for the sixth year in a row to celebrate National Poetry Day, with ‘Remember’ as its theme. We have been working with a group of young poetry producers who help us to curate a day to remember with poetry and spoken-word performances and poetry film.

The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall 1pm – 6pm

I Am Become Words © Carly Ashdown

Free

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Thursday 2 October

The Pity Presented by the Poetry Society Four of the UK’s most exciting poets premiere work about the First World War. Commemorating the centenary of the conflict, the Poetry Society has commissioned contemporary responses from Denise Riley, Steve Ely, Warsan Shire and Zaffar Kunial.

Presented on National Poetry Day, these sequences summon less familiar aspects of the war’s legacy: from Vogue’s directives on mourning attire (‘must not depress’) and the national passion for séances to the notion of no-man’s-land and the rise of modernity.

Supported by The London Community Foundation and Cockayne - Grants for the Arts.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 6pm £10*

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Spirit Level (Blue Room) at Royal Festival Hall

A reading and discussion with three poets who transform scientific observation into poetry.

©Hayley Madden

Celebrate StorySLAM:Live’s fifth anniversary at Southbank Centre – if you think you have the literary X-Factor, bring along a five-minute flash fiction story on the theme of ‘Freedom’ for your chance to read on the night. How have words changed the way you think about the world? Stand up and be counted.

©Hayley Madden

Wednesday 1 October

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Thursday 2 October

Friday 3 October

Michael Donaghy – A Celebration

Shami Chakrabarti

One of the UK’s finest and best-loved poets, Michael Donaghy died at the tragically young age of 50 in 2004. Tonight we mark the tenth anniversary of his death with readings and reminiscence from his friends and family.

On Liberty

This event coincides with the publication of three new Donaghy-related books – the new edition of his Collected Poems, Don Paterson’s critical study of his work, Fifty Ways to Read a Poet, and Maddy Paxman’s memoir The Great Below.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 8.15pm £10*

Now, Shami Chakrabarti – who joined Liberty, the UK’s leading civil rights organisation, on 10 September 2001 – explores why our fundamental rights and freedoms are indispensable. She talks with Jude Kelly about the unprecedented pressures those rights are under today.

Drawing on her own work in high-profile campaigns, from privacy laws to antiterror legislation, Chakrabarti shows the threats to our democratic institutions and why our rights are paramount in upholding democracy.

© Jo Metson Scott

Readers include Sean O’Brien, Jo Shapcott, Paul Farley, Don Paterson, Eva Salzman, Greta Stoddart, John Stammers and Adam O’Riordan, as well as his partner Maddy Paxman and son Ruairi.

On 11 September 2001, our world changed.

The West’s response to 9/11 has morphed into a period of exception. Governments have decided that the rule of law and human rights are often too costly.

‘Probably the most effective public affairs lobbyist of the past 20 years’ (David Aaronovitch, The Times)

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 6.30pm £10*

Friday 3 October

Scratch Mixer Southbank Centre aims to support artists in the development of their work. Scratch Mixer is Southbank Centre’s regular event in which poets and spoken-word artists are specially invited to share their work in progress. If you have a live literature show in development, email literatureandspokenword@ southbankcentre.co.uk for more details.

Festival Village under Queen Elizabeth Hall 7pm £5*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

‘The most dangerous woman in Britain’ (The Sun)

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Friday 3 October

Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 October

Jonathan Powell – Talking to Terrorists

Fun Palaces

How to end armed conflicts

A dream come true for arts and sciences, kids and grown-ups.

Should governments talk to terrorists? Should they ‘negotiate with evil’?

In 1961 Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price conceived and designed the Fun Palace: a ‘laboratory of fun’, ‘a university of the streets’, a revolutionary venue where art and science met, encouraging engagement, debate and enjoyment.

After Labour achieved its landslide victory in 1997, Jonathan Powell spent ten years in government talking to the leaders of the IRA in safe houses across Belfast, Derry and Dublin.

Since leaving Number 10 he has worked with a Geneva-based NGO, negotiating between governments and terrorist groups in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has now established his own NGO, InterMediate, to continue this work.

Without communication, argues Powell, we will never end conflict. As violent insurgencies continue to erupt across the globe, we need people who will brave the depths of the Mindanao jungle and scale the heights of the Colombian mountains, painstakingly tracking down the heavily armed, faceless leaders of these terrorist groups in order to open negotiations with them.

Jonathan Powell discusses the way in which past negotiations shed light on how today’s negotiators can tackle the Taliban, Hammas and al-Qaeda. And history tells us that it may be necessary to fight and talk at the same time.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 8.15pm £10*

Like most revolutionary ideas, the Fun Palace was ahead of its time. It was never built, but its ethos – and even its architectural blue prints – can be seen in arts and community centres across the country and the world.

This weekend we’re turning Southbank Centre into a Fun Palace, standing alongside hundreds of other Fun Palaces across the UK and beyond.

We’re handing the space over to you – to our neighbours and artistic partners, community groups and the general public – and asking: If you had a Fun Palace, what would it be like?

You can have plenty of space, inspiration, and time to think. We are sprinkling the weekend with talks and demonstrations for people of all ages on everything from buildings and the latest in cybernetics, through to the idea of leisure time and the value of the arts today.

We’re expecting there to be lots of people to meet and ideas to start from, materials to experiment with and space to think and create. You can come with an old idea or just prepare to have lots of new ones.

So what would you have in your Fun Palace? Come and dream it up with us.

Suitable for all ages We are grateful to writer Stella Duffy and Sarah-Jane Rawlings for making it possible for anyone and everyone to have their own Fun Palace this weekend, the weekend before Joan Littlewood’s centenary.

The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall 11am – 6pm

© Emily Medley

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Free

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

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© Belinda Lawley

Saturday 4 October

The Green Man A lyrical story for audiences aged 8 – 11

by Kenny Baraka.

Young Adult Literature Weekender Saturday 4 October

The Poetry Butcher Need some help with your poetry writing? Get a slice of feedback from one of our Poetry Butchers.

Not for the faint-hearted, our butchers cut straight to the heart of your poem with their razor-sharp critical expertise.

Only one poem should be brought along on the day, which should be one page of A4 at the most.

To book your place email specialedition@poetrylibrary.org.uk

London Literature Festival presents its first ever young adult fiction mini-fest.

Fizzing with literary market stalls, mini-talks, workshops, performances and The Dystopian Book Club, it features only the finest writers, poets and spoken-word artists.

This mini-fest is curated by young people living, reading and writing in London and is recommended for ages 13 – 19.

Festival Village under Queen Elizabeth Hall 1pm – 5pm £8* Day Pass

Join hip-hop lyricist Kenny Baraka as he tries out some ideas for a new spoken-word show about making things grow and fighting for survival.

This is the story of the Green Man – a guerilla gardener and a man with no family, home or worldly possessions except his trusted potted plant. Surviving only on food grown on rooftops, roadsides and secret hideouts, the Green Man is fighting to save the city before there are no trees, grass, fields or open spaces left.

He needs help. Join him in Secret Hideout 17...

What happens next? After hearing the first 20 minutes of the story, help Kenny decide the Green Man’s fate...

Creative team: Lisa Mead, Carl Ford and Paul Burgess.

The Saison Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall

Funded by Arts Council, England.

12 noon – 5pm

Recommended for ages 8 – 11

Free

Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden 2pm Free Please note, this free event requires a ticket.

Please book your free ticket online, by phone or in person (no fees apply).

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 October

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Saturday 4 October

Saturday 4 October

Eric Hazan on the French Revolution

Nature Writing: Helen Macdonald and Mark Cocker

Eric Hazan presents insights into the legacy of the French Revolution The Revolution of 1789 has remained a fascinating and contentious subject for over two centuries.

Instead of seeing it as an aberrant bloodbath on the path to a liberal society, Eric Hazan, author of A People’s History of the French Revolution, maintains that it fundamentally changed the Western world.

Examining the history of working people and peasants, Hazan asks: How did they see their opportunities? What were they fighting for? What was the Terror and could it be justified? And how was the revolution stopped in its tracks?

Eric Hazan is the founder of the publisher La Fabrique and the author of several books, including Notes on the Occupation and the highly acclaimed Invention of Paris. He has lived in Paris all his life.

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall 4pm £10*

Saturday 4 October

John Cooper Clarke Plus guests Britain’s best loved and most important performance poet, John Cooper Clarke is as vital now as he was in the 1970s. His acerbic, satirical, political and very funny verse, delivered in a rapid-fire performance style, resonated with the punk movement then, and today his influence can be heard through a wide breadth of popular culture from the Arctic Monkeys to The Sopranos.

Join two of our finest nature writers in conversation As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including TH White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest.

When her father died and she was knocked sideways by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk.

She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge.

Then she filled the freezer with hawk food and unplugged the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of birds.

Royal Festival Hall 7.30pm £26.20, £22.50*

After the massive, world-spanning, unanimously acclaimed Birds & People, Mark Cocker looks in fascinating detail at his home parish in Norfolk and its wildlife in Claxton: Field Notes from a Small Planet.

Distilled into a single twelve-month cycle, these writings explore Mark Cocker’s relationship with the East Anglian landscape, to nature and to all the living things around him. @litsouthbank #londonlitfest

He explores how all wildlife is as essential to our sense of genuine well-being and to our feelings of rootedness as any other kind of fellowship.

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6pm £10*

*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

© Paul Wolfgang Webster

© Shutterstock

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

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© istock

Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 October

Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451 – the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns

Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 October

Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilisation’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.

He turns his attention to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall

Saturday 4 October, 7.45pm

Saturday 4 October, 7.45pm

Sunday 5 October, 2pm and 5pm

Sunday 5 October, 3.30pm and 5.30pm

£20* and £15*

£10*

*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

This specially commissioned event dramatises snatches of overheard conversations and confrontations in order to make a series of snapshot observations – some comic, some troubling and some profound – about how freedom can be taken for granted, hard won – and easily lost.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Craig Taylor is the author of One Million Tiny Plays about Britain.

This is a rehearsed reading of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel of a post-literate future, where books are burned and reading is an act of rebellion. Please bring your favourite book. There may be a moment when members of the audience are asked to read aloud if they wish. Directed by James Runcie, Southbank Centre’s Head of Literature and the Spoken Word.

© istock

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Freedom Play

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Sunday 5 October

John Healy, John Hall, Nicholas Johnson A joint reading by three writers.

John Healy, a former wino and street thief, spent 15 years as a vagrant alcoholic on the streets, but then rose to become a chess master capable of playing several games simultaneously whilst wearing a blindfold.

In 1986, living from hand to mouth on a rundown council estate at Kings Cross, he wrote his savage masterpiece The Grass Arena.

John Hall is a visual writer, poet and influential teacher. His is a consistent preoccupation with language, its soundedness, appearance on the page, and what it can get up to in the guise of poems.

Many of his poems rigorously question political language, asking: is this precise, is this truthful?

© ClassicStock / Alamy

Nicholas Johnson’s Listening to the Stones is a post-colonial work about French occupation in New Caledonia, paying witness to the events that led to the Heingene and Ouvea massacres of the Kanaks.

His other collection, Cleave, surveys the first agricultural plague of 21st-century Europe; foot and mouth.

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall 6pm £8*

Sunday 5 October

Sunday Papers Live In association with The Observer

Just like a perfect Sunday morning, with fewer pairs of pyjamas.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 11am £10*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

© Louis Labron

From food to fashion, tech to tiki-taka, hear the voices behind the stories along with a panel of special guests.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Grab a coffee and join Observer writers as they discuss the news and features that matter.

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Sunday 5 October

Maya Angelou: A Celebration Gather Together In Her Name

She lived and chronicled an extraordinary life.

Rising from poverty, violence and racism, she became a renowned author, poet, playwright, memoirist and civil rights activist, working with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

‘You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes,

She wrote and performed a poem, ‘On the Pulse of Morning’, for President Clinton on his inauguration; she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and was honoured by more than 70 universities throughout the world.

You may kill me with your hatefulness

She wrote seven volumes of autobiography beginning with the extraordinary I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, which told of her childhood in 1930s Stamps, Arkansas, the segregated southern US town where her grandmother ran the general store; and of the trauma of rape and the healing power of literature and love.

(From Still I Rise by Maya Angelou)

But still, like air, I’ll rise.’

Monday 6 October

The Complete Works Black and Asian poets in the UK: a two-part evening of discussion and performance.

Maya Angelou was an indomitable force, famed for her spirit and style, courage and laughter. She died on 28 May aged 86. This special evening of song, biography, poetry and testimony, dedicated to her memory, is chaired by Jon Snow and Moira Stuart and directed by Paulette Randall.

Part One: The Discussion

Part Two: The Performance

In 2007 the Free Verse report (Arts Council England) established that of the poets published by major presses in the UK, fewer than 1% are black or Asian. How much has this changed?

Ten of the most exciting young black and Asian poets in the UK present their work, including Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Kayo Chingonyi, Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Inua Ellams, Sarah Howe, Adam Lowe, Eileen Pun and Warsan Shire.

The full cast will be announced in September.

Hosts for the evening are Roger Robinson (internationally acclaimed musician and poet) and Malika Booker (recently shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney first collection prize).

7pm £25*, £20*, £15*

© Dwight Carter

Royal Festival Hall

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall Part One: (6.15pm – 7.30pm) Part Two: (8pm – 10pm) £10*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Maya Angelou was one of the world’s most important writers and activists.

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Southbank Centre and The National Academy of Writing present

Monday 6 October

Koestler Poetry Workshop

Science Fiction – Home of the Literary Activist?

Read and be inspired by poetry written by detainees in a workshop with the Koestler Trust.

Presented by English PEN

Each year the Koestler Trust inspires thousands of poems written by people in prisons, secure hospitals, immigration removal centres and secure children’s homes.

In this workshop led by the trust’s literature officer, poet Holly Hopkins, explore some of these witty and moving poems to gain an insight into the thoughts and lives of the UK’s detainees.

The award-winning poems are then used as inspiration for your own work – whether you are a regular writer or entirely new to writing poetry.

The NAW Public Edit

What is it about the sci-fi genre that goes hand in hand with activism and radical thinking? While PEN has support from writers on all fronts, readers and writers of sci-fi engage most energetically with campaigns, particularly around freedom of expression. Taking PEN’s early president, HG Wells, as a starting point, the discussion features writers including Nick Harkaway, James Smythe and writer and editor Anne C Perry. Chaired by writer and activist Sophie Mayer.

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall 7.45pm £8*

Part of this year’s Catching Dreams: Art by Offenders, Secure Patients and Detainees exhibition at Southbank Centre’s Spirit Level.

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall 7pm – 9pm

The National Academy of Writing offers insights into writing and re-writing effective texts.

The NAW Public Edit takes place in the first hour of this event. Everyone attending may submit a text of up to 2000 words in any genre of fiction or non-fiction. Two texts are chosen at random and distributed to the audience in advance. Novelist, non-fiction writer and NAW Director Richard Beard then publicly edits these texts, working on the principle that writers face similar challenges and an edit for one is an edit for all.

Tuesday 7 October

Colm Tóibín: Nora Webster The launch of a new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today.

It is the 1960s and Nora Webster is living with her two young sons in a small town on the east coast of Ireland. The love of her life, Maurice, has just died and she must work out how to forge a new life for herself.

In the second hour, novelist and short story writer Kevin Barry talks about his process as a writer, taking the ‘pen or word-processor?’ question seriously. How do writers get the work done? What does it take to fix the words on the page?

She deals with an endless procession of annoying visitors and with her unnerving aunt, who has both helped and deeply disturbed the daily life of her children. And, most importantly, she must learn how to give her sons a future as she tries to hold onto the past.

Plenty of time is allotted for questions.

As Nora returns to memories of the happiness of her early marriage, something more painful begins to intrude: memories of her own mother and what brought about the terrifying distance between them.

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall 6pm – 8pm £15*

As heartbreaking as Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster will live with you long after you’ve read the last page.

St Paul’s Roof Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall 7pm £8*

‘A profoundly gifted world writer’ (Sebastian Barry)

£5*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

H G Wells © Daily Mirror

Monday 6 October

©Steve Pyke

Prison Love Hearts, Tottenham Probation, Koestler Awards 2014

Tuesday 7 October

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Tuesday 7 October

Tuesday 7 October

Slavoj Žižek

Martin Parr

The Myth of Western Liberty

Since the mid 1980s, the acute observation, wit and colour of Martin Parr’s work has established him as one of the most successful and popular contemporary photographers.

Slavoj Žižek is today’s most controversial public intellectual.

This year, he has been elected president of the prestigious Magnum agency. Parr’s work is testament to his belief that there is nothing as strange as real life unfolding in front of you.

His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory.

His photographs, which document the idiosyncrasies of British (and more recently global) leisure culture, have received popular acclaim, provoked controversy, and been applauded for their critical observation of the world we have built and inhabit.

It takes in film, popular culture, and literature to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated examination of the world around us.

In this illustrated lecture, he talks about his work.

Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.30pm £55* with book (RRP £59.95)

In this special event, he tackles the future of liberty, freedom and democracy: what do they mean in a world post-Arab Spring, WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden?

£15* without

Royal Festival Hall 7.30pm

© Borut Peterlin

£20*, £15*, £10*

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

©Martin Parr - Magnum Photos

Join Slavoj Žižek as he delivers his take on the world today with the high-octane energy that characterizes his work, in the company of Paul Mason, Economics Editor at Channel 4.

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles. For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

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Tuesday 7 October

Wednesday 8 October

Reflecting on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Sir Ranulph Fiennes: Agincourt 25 October 2015 is the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt – a hugely resonant event in English (and French) history.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes’s new account casts new light on one of the turning points of history.

Poets Malika Booker and Dorothea Smartt re-imagine the life and works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Three of his ancestors fought in the battle for Henry V and some also fought for the French king.

In this exclusive morning event, one of Britain’s undoubted national treasures tells the story of the battle and talks about his research; including learning to shoot with a long-bow, and his trip to the battlefield.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 – 1912) was born in Croydon to a doctor from Sierra Leone and an English mother. He entered the realms of classical music through the assistance of a benefactor and studied at the Royal College of Music.

Royal Festival Hall 11.30am £20* and £15*

With special thanks to the V&A and the Royal College of Music.

Curated by Nkechi Ebite.

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall 8.15pm

© Royal College of Music

Join the two poets as they use poetry to illuminate Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s life and work.

They are accompanied by an original musical soundtrack composed by classically trained musicians Music Off Canvas.

Composer Philip Herbert also provides biographical insight into Coleridge-Taylor.

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

© Bill Prentice - phototech.co.uk

Elgar described ColeridgeTaylor as ‘Far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men.’ Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, The Death of Minnehaha and The Song of Hiawatha are amongst his notable works.

£10*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

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Wednesday 8 October

Wednesday 8 October

Wednesday 8 October

Nature Writing: Badgerlands

The SI Leeds Literary Prize Celebration

Polari

With Patrick Barkham

A Little Dust on the Eyes by Minoli Salgado won the inaugural SI Leeds Literary Prize.

The fourth annual prize celebrating debut LGBT authors, kindly sponsored

by Societe Generale UK LGBT Network.

Britain is the home of the badger – there are more badgers per square kilometre in this country than in any other. And yet many of us have never seen one alive and in the wild.

They are nocturnal creatures who vanish into their labyrinthine underground setts at the first hint of a human.

Here, Patrick Barkham follows in the footsteps of his badger-loving grandmother, to meet the feeders, farmers and scientists who know their way around Badgerlands: the strange world in which these distinctively striped creatures snuffle, dig and live out their complex social lives.

As the debate over the badger cull continues, Barkham weighs the evidence on both sides of the argument, and traces the story of badgers from their prehistoric arrival in Britain and their savage persecution over the centuries, to Kenneth Grahame’s fictional creation in Wind in the Willow and the badger who became a White House pet.

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

Acclaimed author and literary critic Bernardine Evaristo introduces this debut novel.

Tonight’s headliners are award-winning writer Ali Smith and Mari Hannah, winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2013.

A national, biennial award for black and Asian women writers in the UK, founded in 2012, the SI Leeds Literary Prize’s patrons include Bonnie Greer and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Plus Will Davies, Karen McLeod and Justin David.

This year sees the announcement of the second award at the Ilkley Literature Festival in October.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.45pm

This pre-award announcement celebration features discussion and performances, including readings from the 2014 SI Leeds Literary Prize shortlist. It includes the opportunity to meet Minoli and buy her book.

£10*

End the night in style at our reception and join us for drinks on the Level 5 Balcony Bar after the event.

Wednesday 8 October

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall

Shared Reading: Tom Phillips’ A Humument

7pm – 9.30pm Free Please note, this free event requires a ticket.

Please book your free ticket online, by phone or in person (no fees apply).

7pm

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

©Heini Schneebeli

© Marlon James

© istock

£10*

We invite you to read together from the latest edition of Tom Phillips’ ongoing project A Humument. The project was created by combining carefully selected words from a Victorian novel, which was then layered with visual effects. The audience for this shared reading each have sections to read as we bring this incredible work to life in the library.

The Saison Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall 8pm £5*

Book Book tickets: tickets: 0844 0844 847 847 9910 9910southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Patrick Barkham delves into the rich history of a mysterious British animal.

First Book Prize

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‘Author’ Koestler, HM Prison Peterborough, Koestler Awards 2014

© Jane Brown

Thursday 9 October

Tithonus – 46 minutes in the life of the Dawn The world premiere of a new poem, specially commissioned by Southbank Centre, read by the poet herself.

In Greek mythology, the Dawn fell in love with Tithonus and asked Zeus to make him immortal, but she forgot to ask that he should not grow old.

Unable to die, he grew older and older, until at last Dawn locked him in a room where, several thousand years later, he still sits babbling to himself.

This is an account of his babbling, written in real time, through a series of dawns from spring to midsummer 2014. It is a poem about survival.

The performance begins in darkness and lasts 46 minutes (the length of dawn in midsummer).

Latecomers will not be admitted.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 6.30pm £15*

Thursday 9 October

Southbank Centre First Look Book Club A book club that allows readers to try books before they’re even published.

Get a first look at a new book in the company of a publisher. Bound proofs or electronic versions of a book are sent to ticket holders a month before the event and several months before it is published.

Our first choice is Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn.

On a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1936, a woman accidentally interrupts an attempted murder in a London hotel room.

Nina Land, a West End actress, faces a dilemma: she’s not supposed to be at the hotel in the first place, and certainly not with society portraitist Stephen Wyley.

But once it becomes apparent that she may have seen the face of the man the newspapers have dubbed ‘the Tie-Pin Killer’ she realises that a refusal to come forward may endanger another woman’s life.

Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. He is the author of The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, Half of the Human Race and The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize.

An evening showcasing award-winning writing by offenders, secure patients and detainees from the 2014 Koestler Awards.

Arts in criminal justice professionals, ex-offender writers, and artist Janetka Platun, who was commissioned to create the creative writing installation within this year’s Art by Offenders exhibition, talk about their experience of people in custody using writing to achieve freedom and participate in society.

This is a rare opportunity to hear top Koestler Award-winning writers give readings of their recent work.

Part of this year’s Catching Dreams: Art by Offenders, Secure Patients and Detainees exhibition at Southbank Centre, which was curated by graduates of the Koestler Trust’s mentoring programme for ex-offenders.

7.45pm

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

Spirit Level (Blue Room) at Royal Festival Hall

£10* (including book) *No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Writing from Prison

Tickets limited to 30 people.

7.30 pm

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Thursday 9 October

£8* Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Alice Oswald

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Friday 10 – Sunday 12 October Paines Plough in association with Southbank Centre present

Come To Where I’m From A playwrights’ guide to Great Britain A huge, interactive map of Great Britain.

People walk around it and on it. Plotted on the map are more than 100 playwrights, their names written on the place they grew up in; they talk about the places that shaped them.

Sheila Hancock Miss Carter’s War The celebrated actress discusses her new novel with Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre.

It is 1948 and Britain is struggling to recover from the Second World War. Half French, half English, Marguerite Carter has lost both her parents and survived a terrifying war, working for the SOE behind enemy lines. She has left behind her partisan lover Andre and returned to England to become one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Cambridge.

Now she pins back her unruly curls, draws a pencil seam up her legs, ties the laces on her sensible black shoes, belts her grey gabardine mac and sets out on her future as an English teacher in a South London girls’ grammar school.

For Miss Carter has a mission to fight social injustice, to prevent war and to educate her girls.

Pull up a pew and listen to James Graham’s paean to the lost mining industry in his native Mansfield, sit on the edge of your seat for Richard Dormer’s heart-thumping scrapes in Troubles-torn Belfast, wander into Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s garrulous family home in Watford.

Or scan a QR code and download a play onto your smartphone. Let Tim Price conjure Cardiff while you’re wandering along the South Bank.

Throughout the weekend, guest playwrights read their plays live, stood on their home town on the map, surrounded by audiences.

Friday 10 October

Friday Tonic with MasterCard Kate Tempest curates a special Friday Tonic for the London Literature Festival.

Festival Village under Queen Elizabeth Hall Friday 10 October, 6pm – 10pm

The Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Saturday 11 & Sunday 12 October, 10am – 8pm

5.30pm Free

Free

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 8.15pm £10*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Thursday 9 October

©Phoebe Cheong

Find a playwright, or a place, pop on some headphones, grab a seat at the side of the map, and listen to a mini play written by that playwright about their home town, city or village.

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Friday 10 October

Hilary Mantel The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher Hilary Mantel is one of Britain’s most accomplished, acclaimed and garlanded writers.

Uniquely, her last two novels won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

In this new collection of ten stories, all her gifts of characterisation, observation and intelligence are once again fully on display. With settings ranging from Saudi Arabia to Greece to London, they reveal a great writer at the peak of her powers.

Hilary reads from the collection and is in conversation with James Runcie, Southbank Centre’s Head of Literature and the Spoken Word.

Royal Festival Hall 7.30pm

©Niamh Convery

£25*, £20*, £15*

Friday 10 October

Kate Tempest Hold Your Own New poetry from a fiercely talented Ted Hughes Award-winning poet.

This four-part work follows him through his transformations from child, man and woman to blind prophet; through this structure, Tempest holds up a mirror to contemporary life in a direct and provocative way rarely associated with poetry. Kate is one of the most outstanding voices of our times.

Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.30pm £15* and £12*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

©Joshua Irwandi

Kate Tempest follows up her outstanding sell-out show Brand New Ancients with a new full-length collection of poetry – an ambitious, multi-voiced work based around the mythical figure of Tiresias.

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Friday 10 October

Hayward Preview: MIRRORCITY Artists Tim Etchells and Lindsay Seers discuss Hayward Gallery’s new exhibition, MIRRORCITY. On the eve of the exhibition, they discuss their work in relation to its main themes with writer Tom McCarthy. © Belinda Lawley

MIRRORCITY brings together art informed by science fiction, the emergence of new speculative philosophies and the effects of the internet on our lives.

Saturday 11 October

Saturday 11 October

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Do It Yourself Zine Day

7.45pm

Activist and feminist groups are invited to create fanzines on The Clore Ballroom floor.

How We Are: Vincent Deary

The panel is chaired by the exhibition’s curator, Stephanie Rosenthal.

Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now (interior), 2012. Commissioned by Artangel; Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart, Australia; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE. Courtesy the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

£10*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

In celebration of International Day of the Girl and of politically minded young people everywhere, come and explore what matters to you, what you’d like to change and what inspires you. Then cut it all up and reassemble it in your very own fanzine.

12 noon – 4pm The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall Free

A compelling literary debut about how we negotiate change in our daily lives.

Psychologist and writer Vincent Deary reveals how much of our lives are lived automatically, how resistant we are to deliberate change, but why change is empowering and necessary. Illuminated through personal stories and rich cultural references, How We Are is the first volume in a sensational trilogy that will examine what makes us human: how we are, how we break, and how, eventually, we mend.

Vincent Deary specialises in helping people change their lives for the better.

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall 2pm £8*

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Taking London as its point of departure, this panel also examines the way artists investigate the multifaceted realities of the here and now.

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Saturday 11 October

Josh Cohen: The Private Life

James Meek: Private Island

Psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Josh Cohen enquires into the nature of privacy today.

A conversation with James Meek about how Britain’s common wealth became private.

Privacy is under assault. A culture of intrusion governed by the unholy alliance of voyeurism and exhibitionism deems that we should know everything. But what do we actually mean by privacy? What goes on behind the net curtains of our minds, and what can we learn from poking around in our dreams, memories and fantasies?

In a little over a generation, the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners.

Saturday 11 October

James Meek discusses the impact this has had on us all.

Richard Strange and Cabaret Futura in association with Southbank Centre present

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall

6pm

4pm

£8*

Language Is A Virus From Outer Space William S Burroughs Centenary Celebration

£8*

A gonzo gala cut-up evening of art, music, film, song and testimony devoted to William S Burroughs, the celebrated American writer and author of The Naked Lunch, in his one hundredth anniversary year.

Saturday 11 October

Writing as a Key to Creativity

Once described as the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift, Burroughs believed ‘In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.’

How do visual artists use language to unlock ideas?

Boring this won’t be. At the heart of the evening is the world premiere of a new cantata by Gavin Bryars and Richard Strange – Language is a Virus from Outer Space.

Join three artists from the forthcoming MIRRORCITY exhibition at Hayward Gallery as they discuss the important role of writing in their work and how different art forms can inspire each other.

We also feature…..

A one-off reunion performance of the seminal proto-punk band the Doctors of Madness; Audrey Riley (Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Coldplay, Icebreaker): Sarah Jane Morris (The Communards, The Republic, The Happy End); Anni Hogan (Marc and the Mambas, Barry Adamson, Paul Weller); and Kate St. John (Philip Glass, Damon Albarn, Tom Waits, The Dream Academy, Van Morrison, Marianne Faithfull).

J.P. Morgan Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

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£8*

*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.30pm £25*, £15* ©istock

Josh Cohen ©Abigail Schama

6pm

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Saturday 11 October

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Sunday 12 October

Explore Everything: Bradley Garrett

Sunday 12 October

Danny Dorling Inequality and the 1%

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Jacqueline Rose

Danny Dorling talks about rising inequality in the UK.

Women In Dark Times

More and more people are driven toward the poverty line while the 1% continues to get richer.

From Rosa Luxemburg to Marilyn Monroe…

Leading feminist writer Jacqueline Rose is in conversation with Southbank Centre’s Artistic Director, Jude Kelly.

Set off on a journey through the life, times and inner thoughts of some of the most creative women of the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries.

Jacqueline Rose provides a new template for the struggles of women today.

Descending into some of the bleakest realities of our time, such as honour killings, she argues that the work of feminism is far from done. Women in Dark Times is both a tribute and a challenge.

Level 5 Function Room at Royal Festival Hall

Bradley L. Garrett discusses how ‘placehacking’ reclaims closed, private and derelict spaces to make them realms of opportunity – and how this transgression almost cost him his freedom.

4pm £8*

It is widely accepted that high rates of inequality are damaging to society, although some sceptics remain to be convinced.

What is the real cost of the super rich? What exactly is it about inequality that causes most harm?

Danny Dorling – leading authority on social issues, inequality and housing – explains why the growing wealth of the wealthy is making the UK a more dangerous place to live.

7.45pm

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

£8*

2pm £8*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Saturday 11 October

What does it feel like to find the city’s edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis?

© Howard Sayer

©Jonathon Ring

The author of Explore Everything: PlaceHacking the City talks to Anna Minton.

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Sunday 12 October

Elif Shafak A preview of a sweeping and magical new novel from Elif Shafak.

The Architect’s Apprentice is set in a 16th-century Istanbul bursting with colour, romance and white elephants.

Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. ©istock

Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages.

She is a contributor to The Telegraph, The Guardian and The New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 1,000,000 views since July 2010.

Sunday 12 October

Penny Readings

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

The greatest poetry and prose travels from the page to your ear...

6pm

Based on the traditional Victorian penny readings popularised by Charles Dickens, the evening offers a collection of readings that celebrate the freedom and struggles of human life.

£8*

Some readers are members of the local community who read aloud together every week as part of The Reader Organisation’s work in South London, while others have faces which are little more recognisable...

The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall 5pm Free, but bring a penny on the day @litsouthbank #londonlitfest

‘You don’t get such warmth in the audience, and from the stage, anywhere else – it’s the best night of the year.’

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

©Zeynel Abidin

(Audience member on Penny Readings Liverpool 2013)

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

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Sunday 12 October

Sunday 12 October

Africa39 – Book Launch

Le Grand Meaulnes Translation Duel

The most promising voices from Africa South of the Sahara Clifton Gachagua (Kenya), Nadifa Mohamed (Somalia) and Stanley Kenani (Malawi) talk about their work with the Africa39 anthology editor Ellah Allfrey and discuss the creativity and amazing writing from their regions.

They are part of a selection of 39 promising writers under 40 from Africa south of the Sahara and diaspora. The Africa39 project was created by the Hay Festival and UNESCO Port Harcourt World Book Capital.

This event is also the book launch for the Africa39 anthology which is published by Bloomsbury: 20 countries, 39 African writers and a preface by Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka.

Rival translators discuss Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes John Fowles once referred to the bildungsroman as ‘the greatest novel of adolescence in European Literature’.

The author was killed in the first few weeks of the First World War and the book has become an elegy for a lost generation. But how can we appreciate it in English?

Daniel Hahn mediates a discussion between rival translators Frank Wynne and Sarah Ardizzone.

Expect intriguing discrepancies and heated discussion in an event which sheds light both on the novel and on what literary translation is all about.

The discussion is followed by drinks.

No knowledge of French is required.

Weston Roof Pavilion at Royal Festival Hall

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

6pm

8pm

£8*

£8*

Monday 13 October

2014 Man Booker Prize Readings A series of six readings and conversations about the books shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize. The prize is the world’s most important literary award and has the power to transform the fortunes of authors and publishers.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014 will be chaired by AC Grayling.

The judges are: Jonathan Bate, Sarah Churchwell, Dr Alastair Niven, Dr Daniel Glaser and Erica Wagner.

The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 9 September 2014.

©John Foley Opale

7.30 pm

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

£20*, £15*, £10*

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Royal Festival Hall

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Throughout the festival

Tom Phillips: Illuminated Tweets An exhibition tracking Tom Phillips’ A Humument through its recent incarnations across digital platforms.

The Debating Chamber The Debating Chamber takes place throughout the festival on The Clore Ballroom floor. It provides a central focus for performance, debate, talks and ideas generation. This largescale, interactive installation includes an exhibition offering a way to explore the many ways communication technologies, from the printing press to the computer, have enabled ideas to be disseminated throughout history. This element is curated by Southbank Centre and includes loans from collections such as that of the Centre for Computing History.

The Humument app invites readers to randomly seek advice from the pages of the book, and a USB card of Phillips reading the work brings to life the rich musical textures of his poetry.

Also on display are a number of Illuminated Tweets, which combine the author’s tweeted poetry with the distinctive signature of his visual work.

Created by Muf architecture/art.

The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall 10am – 11pm

Tuesday 9 September – Sunday 26 October

Free

11am – 8pm The Saison Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall

©istock

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Free

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Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

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Coming up later this year Sunday 2 November

SLAMbassadors UK

Graham Norton

The UK’s loudest and longest running solo youth slam is back, showcasing the best young talent in the country, plus a special guest appearance by 2014 judge Kate Tempest.

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world’s biggest stars for nearly twenty years.

He is loved across the nation for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings.

Brought to you by the Poetry Society, the SLAMbassadors UK national final gives over the stage to the greatest young spoken-word artists in the nation, including sets from spoken-word sensations Joelle Taylor and Kate Tempest. Forget the autumn weather, this promises to be one of the hottest nights of the poetry year.

Now is your chance to see Graham live in conversation as he talks about his brilliant new memoir The Life and Loves of a He Devil – a hilariously honest account of how the things we love make us who we are.

4pm – 7pm

From his Irish childhood to the present day, Graham shares his most memorable experiences – the side-splittingly funny, the tear-jerkingly sad, and everything in between. With Graham’s blend of characteristic humour and outrageous candour, he regales us with tales of his loves and losses and how they’ve shaped his life.

Free

Royal Festival Hall

Prepare to stomp your feet and raise the roof: this is poetry at the heart of the revolution.

The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall

7.30pm

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© Dan Burn-Forti

© Hayley Madden

£30* including signed copy

*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Sunday 9 November

Sunday 9 November

Remembrance Sunday: Britten’s War Requiem

No Man’s Land

Marin Alsop and the Royal Academy of Music Join Marin Alsop and the young musicians of the Royal Academy of Music in a performance of Benjamin Britten’s towering War Requiem.

The Talks The concert forms part of a day that marks the 100th anniversary of World War One. If you choose a £15 ticket, you can also attend a series of talks and workshops throughout the day. Starting in the morning from 10am, these talks provide an insight into the history and the culture of the times surrounding Britten’s War Requiem.

Margaret MacMillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions and – just as importantly – the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster; Jerry White examines Londoners’ experiences of bombing raids by German airships; Allan Little looks at the long shadow over the twentieth century caused by events in Sarajevo (from 1914 to the Bosnian War); Andrew Motion reads Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum est and talks about the poetry of Edward Thomas while Karen Leeder introduces the work of his German equivalent: Ernst Stadler.

The Great War gave birth to some of the twentieth century’s most celebrated writing; from Brooke to Sassoon, the poetry generated by the war is etched into collective memory. But it is in prose fiction that we find some of the most profound insights into the war’s individual and communal tragedies, the horror of life in the trenches and the grand farce of the first industrial war.

The extraordinary new anthology No Man’s Land, featuring unheard and remarkable voices from twenty nations around the world, has now been edited, into a dramatic one-hour reading for four actors, created by novelist and director Neil Bartlett.

Further details of the timetable to be announced on the Southbank Centre website nearer the time.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Experience all the talks and concert for just £15*

7.45pm

Concert-only tickets are £10*

£12*

Royal Festival Hall

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Friday 31 October

©istock

Literature events continue right up until Christmas. Here are the highlights of our late autumn season.

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Marilynne Robinson is a writer unlike anyone else in contemporary literature and arguably one of the greatest novelists of our time. Lila is her new novel.

Homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, Lila steps inside a small-town Iowa church – the only available shelter from the rain – and so begins a new existence after years of suffering and hardship.

Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home, Lila is an unforgettable story about a girl who lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder.

Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.45pm £10*

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Saturday 29 – Sunday 30 November

The Mirror Image A Song of Five Tuesday-night sessions Good And Evil in Hayward Gallery with poet Tamar Yoseloff.

The celebrated poet runs a short course inspired by Hayward Gallery’s autumn exhibition, MIRRORCITY. Taking London as its point of departure, the exhibition focuses on art informed by science fiction, the emergence of new speculative philosophies and the effects of the internet on our lives. Author of several collections of poetry, Tamar has an interest in the relationship between art and poetry.

Thursdays 18, 25 November, 2, 9 & 16 December Hayward Gallery 6.30 – 8.15pm £100* for all 5 sessions

Premiere October 1946, Nuremberg.

Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands narrates an original piece that offers new insights into the lives of three men at the heart of the trial, with the music that crossed the courtroom to connect prosecutor and defendant. A personal exploration of the origins of modern justice and the fate of individuals and groups, in images, words and music.

Featuring the music of Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mizrahi, Aragon and Leonard Cohen, performed by acclaimed bass-baritone Laurent Naouri and renowned jazz pianist Guillaume de Chassy.

Directed by Nina Brazier.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Monday 1 December

Wednesday 3 December

Liberty and Southbank Centre are proud to present…

Ali Smith

The 2014 Liberty Human Rights Awards To celebrate 80 years of holding the powerful to account in the name of freedom, fairness and justice, Liberty, the UK’s oldest human rights and civil liberties organisation, opens this event to the public for the very first time.

The awards honour individuals and organisations dedicated to protecting and promoting our freedoms. They give voice to stories that may otherwise go unheard and celebrate the hard work, inspiration and dedication of those who champion the rights of ordinary people.

Join us for this amazing celebration of the great, good and the gutsy working on the frontline of human rights. The event is hosted by comedian, novelist, actor, broadcaster, show-off and international treasure Sandi Toksvig, with appearances from some very special guests and music from singersongwriter and activist Billy Bragg.

Plus Director of Liberty Shami Chakrabarti talks to screen legend and lifelong campaigner Vanessa Redgrave about acting, activism and the future of liberty.

Without the oxygen of literary translation, contemporary fiction and poetry will always run the risk of stagnation and a lingering decline. Ali Smith addresses how language and literature are naturally international and suggests that one of the world’s most dominant languages can’t ignore the proliferation of life and lives that make up the global library.

Ali Smith is one of the most exciting, daring and engaged writers working today. Join her in a conversation exploring what is at stake for readers and writers if our connection to outstanding books from other languages is threatened.

Chaired by writer and translator Daniel Hahn.

Ali Smith is joined on stage by writer and film maker Xiaolu Guo. Living Translation is part of a National Conversation led by the Writers’ Centre Norwich.

Find out more and join in the conversation at nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk.

Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall 7.45pm £10*

Queen Elizabeth Hall

7.45pm

7pm

£20* and £15*

£10*

*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

Living Translation

Book tickets: 0844 847 9910 southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest

@litsouthbank #londonlitfest

Marilynne Robinson

Tuesdays 18 November – 16 December

© Sarah Wood

© Derek Adams

Thursday 13 November

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Notes

Sunday 14 December

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens, adapted by Rosie Kellagher The return of last year’s sold-out show; a star-studded 75-minute rehearsed reading of this classic Christmas story, narrated by Griff Rhys Jones, with music on the violin and some very special guests.

Queen Elizabeth Hall 6pm (with carols and mulled wine in the foyer from 5pm) £15* and £10*

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*No transaction fees for in-person bookings or Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

For other bookings transaction fees apply: £1.75 online; £2.75 over the phone.

How to book Online & phone: southbankcentre.co.uk/londonlitfest 0844 847 9910 9am – 8pm daily Transaction fees apply (excluding free events).

No transaction fees for Southbank Centre Members and Supporters Circles.

In person: Royal Festival Hall Ticket Office 10am – 8pm daily

JOIN THE CONVERSATION /southbankliterature @litsouthbank #londonlitfest /southbankcentre

GETTING HERE Southbank Centre Belvedere Road London SE1 8XX

Southbank Centre has excellent public transport connections.

Underground: Waterloo and Embankment Buses: Waterloo Bridge, York Road, Belvedere Road and Stamford Street Mainline rail stations: Waterloo, Waterloo East and Charing Cross

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

We’d love to hear your feedback via customerrelations@southbankcentre.co.uk