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Paid event
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Weston Roof Pavilion, Level 6, Green Side, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX - London, United Kingdom

Organised by Southbank Centre

Authors Lauren Groff and Elif Shafak discuss their latest novels, the art of writing historical fiction and reclaiming the stories of the past with Lara Feigel.


Set between Cyprus on the brink of war in 1974, and contemporary London, Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees tells a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature and, finally, renewal.

Thoroughly modern in the writing, historically exacting in the detail, and fresh and feminist in its bones, Groff’s Matrix tells the story of Marie de France, a queer woman who attempts to wield power in medieval Europe despite not fitting the gender ideals of the era.

Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality and ecstasy in a mesmerising portrait of consuming passion and womanhood.

Lauren Groff is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels and two celebrated short story collections. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic and several best American short stories anthologies.

She has won the Paul Bowles Prize for Fiction, the PEN/O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize and the Story Prize; and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orange Award for New Writers and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize among others. In 2018 Groff received a Guggenheim fellowship in fiction and a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband, two sons and dog.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist who writes in both Turkish and English, and has published 18 books, 11 of which are novels. Her work has been translated into 55 languages. Her latest novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize, and chosen Blackwell’s Book of the Year.

Her previous novel, The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by the BBC as one of its 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow.

Lara Feigel is a professor of modern literature and culture at King’s College London, where she co-directs the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture. She is the author of five books, most recently Free Woman, part memoir, part biography of Doris Lessing, and the novel The Group, which rethinks Mary McCarthy’s novel for our times. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and reviews regularly for The Guardian.

Organisers

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Authors Lauren Groff & Elif Shafak in ConversationLondon, United Kingdom