Royal Society of Literature LSE Literary Festival event
Date: Tuesday 24 February 2015
Time: 5.15-6.15pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Marion Coutts, Ali Smith
Chair: Maggie Fergusson
Ali Smith's How to be Both, in which the lives of a 15th-century fresco painter and a 21st-century Cambridge schoolgirl mysteriously intertwine, was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, and won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize. Marion Coutts's fierce, shocking and beautiful memoir, The Iceberg, tracing the two years between her husband's diagnosis with and death from a brain tumour, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Both have been picked extensively as books of the year. Meeting one another for the first time, they talk about how to look beneath the surface of life, how to weigh words, and how to reconcile grief and joy.
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Artful, There but for the, Free Love, Like, Hotel World, Other Stories and Other Stories, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy and The First Person and Other Stories.
Marion Coutts is an artist and writer. She works in video, film, sculpture and photography. Her work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including solo shows at Foksal Gallery, Warsaw, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Wellcome Collection, London. She has held fellowships at Tate Liverpool and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. In 2001 she married the art critic Tom Lubbock. After his death in 2011, she wrote the introduction to his memoir Until Further Notice, I am Alive and is the editor of English Graphic, an anthology of his essays. She is a Lecturer in Art at Goldsmiths College.
Maggie Fergusson is Director of the Royal Society of Literature.
This event is organised in association with the Royal Society of Literature (@RSLiterature). Membership of the Royal Society of Literature is open to all. For just £50 per annum, it offers free entry to over 20 events each year. Speakers for spring 2015 include Rosie Alison, Mark Bostridge, Carmen Callil, Peter Carey, Kate Clanchy, Mark Doty, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Claire Harman, Hermione Lee, Andrew Motion, Andrew O’Hagan, Ruth Padel, Jo Shapcott and Kate Tempest.
This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
The LSE Photo Prize 2015 - Pop Up Exhibition will be on display in the Ground Floor of the New Academic Building on this day, why not pop along before the event? Access to the public with tickets for this event from 4.45pm.
Suggested hashtag for the event for Twitter users #LSElitfest
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Podcast
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CPD
This event has been certified for CPD purposes by the CPD Certification Service. Self-Assessment Record forms will be made available for delegates wishing to record further learning and knowledge enhancement for Continuing Personal and Professional Development (CPD) purposes. For delegates who wish to obtain a CPD Certificate of Attendance, it is the responsibility of delegates to register their details with a LSE steward at the end of the event and as of 1 September 2014 a certificate will be sent within 28 days of the date of the event attended by the CPD Certification Service. If a delegate fails to register their details at the event, it will not prove possible to issue a certificate. (For queries relating to CPD Certificates of attendance after a request please phone 0208 840 4383 or email info@cpduk.co.uk).