Step inside Bloomsbury Publishing as we explore provocative storytelling and two authors of contemporary literary fiction who are unafraid to push the boundaries of style and content and be bold in their writing.
We’re delighted to present a very special evening on writing brave fiction with Emma Glass, author of Peach, and Sofka Zinovieff, author of Putney, whose novels were heralded far and wide for their bravery and finesse.
Emma and Sofka will discuss how they came to write stories that demand so much of their readers (as well as their authors) with award-winning journalist Anita Sethi. They’ll discuss how others can write as authentically, also provocatively and unashamedly, by following their writing advice and insight. Writers of all forms of fiction can learn much about the craft of writing stories that shock and impress in equal measure!
We hope you’re free to join us.
Date: Wednesday, May 15th
Timing: Doors open and drinks from 6:00 to 6:30pm. Our guests in conversation from 6:30pm, followed by Q&A and book signing. Event concludes at 8:00pm
Venue: Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, WC1B 3DP
Nearest station: Tottenham Court Road
Tickets: £20 for Adults / £15 Concessions. Tickets include a copy of Peach (£7.99) and Putney (£8.99)
TICKETS through the Bloomsbury Institute website:
Emma Glass was born in Swansea. She studied English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Kent, then decided to become a nurse and went back to study Children’s Nursing at Swansea University. She lives in north London and is a research nurse specialist at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Peach is her first book.
Sofka Zinovieff was born in London. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge, then lived in Greece and Moscow. She is the acclaimed author of three works of non-fiction, Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life and The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, a New York Times Editors’ Choice 2015, and one previous novel, The House on Paradise Street. Her writing has appeared in publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator and theIndependent. She divides her time between Athens and England.
Peach by Emma Glass
Peach is a teenage girl like any other. She has college, and her friends, and her parents and the new baby, and her gorgeous boyfriend Green. She has her friend Sandy, and Sid the cat, and homework to do.
But something has happened – something unspeakable – and her world has become unfamiliar, fractured into strange textures and patterns. Reeling through her refracted universe, Peach knows that the people she loves are in danger, real danger. If she is not to be swallowed whole, Peach must summon all her courage and dig deep into something nameless and strange that lies within her.
An astonishing debut by a visionary new voice; ‘A strange and original work of art’ – George Saunders
‘Poetic’ Independent
‘The language is scintillating, the emotional heft remarkable’ Observer
‘Daring’ Sunday Times
Putney by Sofka Zinovieff
It is the 1970s and Ralph, an up-and-coming composer, is visiting Edmund Greenslay at his riverside home in Putney to discuss a collaboration. Through the house’s colourful rooms and unruly garden flits nine-year-old Daphne – dark, teasing, slippery as mercury, more sprite than boy or girl. From the moment their worlds collide, Ralph is consumed by an obsession to make Daphne his.
But Ralph is twenty-five and Daphne is only a child, and even in the bohemian abandon of 1970s London their fast-burgeoning relationship must be kept a secret. It is not until years later that Daphne is forced to confront
the truth of her own childhood – and an act of violence that has lain hidden for decades.
Putney is a bold, thought-provoking novel about the moral lines we tread, the stories we tell ourselves and the memories that play themselves out again and again, like snatches of song.
“Sofka Zinovieff writes about this moral minefield with the necessary sensitivity, inhabiting her characters so convincingly that the conclusion is all the more chilling” – Kate Saunders, The Times
“This is a really important book. I loved it. Thought provoking, emotionally complex, and tackling the topic of the day – the blurred area between consent and abuse” – Esther Freud,
“The ultimate taboo brought to life in a way that’s thrillingly disturbing and evocative. I couldn’t leave it” – Mary Portas