A selection of bookshop readings, performances, literary lunches, salons, festivals and other writerly goings-on are listed here and regularly updated.
For your wider literary and cultural fix, check out the in-person and virtual event listings at the British Library, the London Review Bookshop, Waterstones, English PEN, the Southbank Centre, publisher and author websites and social media streams, as well as those of your local organisations and venues.
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Wednesday 3 December
Palestine Minus One at the Manchester Museum
Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9PL
6pm, £10/£5 Accessible/£15 Solidarity
An evening of reflection, discussion, food, readings and artefacts from the Museum’s own archive, with author Yara El-Ghadban, editor Basma Ghalayini, Gazan speculative fiction expert Shaimaa Abulebda, activist Musheir El Farra and one very special guest.
Proceeds from this event will be donated to Sheffield PSC’s Khan Younis emergency relief fund.
More info and book
Read Basma Ghalayini’s introduction to Palestine Minus One
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Thursday 4 December
The Orwell Lecture 2025: Steven Pinker
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7:30pm
£20 to £37
This annual event celebrates the enduring legacy of George Orwell, with lecturers tasked with addressing “any subject Orwell might have been interested in”, and Steven Pinker will be delivering an original lecture bringing together Orwell’s relevance to our moment with his own research in the fields of language, cognition and social relations.
More info and book
Part of the year-round Southbank Centre Literature & Spoken Word programme.
For full listings, visit southbankcentre.co.uk
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Ongoing
Arvon courses and retreats
Online or in-person, from one hour at home to five weeks at historic writers’ houses in Devon, Shropshire and Yorkshire, you can find inspiration, support and transform your writing with Arvon. Discover a range of creative writing courses and events for writers of any genre and any level of experience.
Residential courses for Autumn/Winter 2025 include Poetry: Falling Headlong Into Your Greatest Obsessions with Caroline Bird, Stephen Sexton and Karen McCarthy Woolf (Lumb Bank, 17 to 22 November); Editing Fiction and Non-Fiction with Claire Fuller, Kaiya Shang and Juliet Pickering (Totleigh Barton, 24 to 29 November); Exploring Feminine Creativity with Nikita Gill, Salena Godden and Joelle Taylor (The Hurst, 1 to 6 December); Fiction: Finding Your Voice with Lisa Harding, Cynan Jones and Louise Doughty (Lumb Bank, 1 to 6 December); and Fiction: Art Imitates Life with Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Nicola Dinan and Eimear McBride (Totleigh Barton, 8 to 13 December).
More info and book
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