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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to Tuesday 28 July
The Conversation 2026 Spring/Summer Season: Beyond Algorithms. Beyond Orthodoxy. Real Insight for a Just World
St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ
7 pm to 8:30 pm
£10 in-person or live stream + £3.95 booking fee
The Conversation, held in the atmospheric Crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explores social justice and how we imagine the world with curiosity, knowledge and wisdom – a humane intelligence that values insight and understanding over news and information. The interviews take place live and online, chaired by series director Peter Florence, Caitlin McNamara and Sam Wells. They last an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then a book-signing and informal conversation.
Tuesday 26 May
Armistead Maupin: 50 Years on Barbary Lane
Tuesday 2 June
Sarah Churchwell: The American Dream at 250
Tuesday 16 June
Jonathan Sumption: The Challenges of Democracy, and the Rule of Law
Tuesday 23 June
Oliver Bullough: Everybody Loves Our Dollars – How Money Laundering Won
Tuesday 30 June
Ali Smith: The Way We Live Now
Tuesday 7 July
Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane: The Book of Birds – Words and Painting
Tuesday 14 July
Janina Ramirez: Legenda
Tuesday 28 July
Andrea Wulf: The Traveller – The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and His Search for Humanity
More info and book
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Tuesday 19 May to Sunday 28 June
Tishani Doshi: Egrets, While War
Poet, novelist and dancer Tishani Doshi launches her fifth poetry collection, published by Bloodaxe Books on 21 May, with a series of events in the UK and Ireland, starting with online readings and ending at Ledbury Poetry Festival. Tishani has devised a dance piece which she will be performing at festivals including Dalkey Book Festival and Ledbury. The timely, powerful and sometimes playful poems of Egrets, While War explore environmental loss, ancestral memory, the slow transformations of ageing, and the devastations of war. But as the American writer Aimee Nezhukumatathil puts it: “Even as war and extinction press close, Doshi keeps turning us toward astonishment, toward the tender fact of being alive together in a world that is breaking and still unbearably radiant.”
Tuesday 19 May
Bloodaxe joint reading and discussion with Jennifer Lee Tsai (Melete) and Patricia Smith (The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems)
Saturday 23 May
Hay Festival with Len Pennie
Friday 29 to Sunday 31 May
Jaipur Literature Festival, Dublin
Thursday 4 June
The Coronet Theatre, London: Poetry Club with Isabelle Baafi and Asmaa Azaizeh
Friday 5 to Sunday 7 June
Jaipur Literature Festival at the British Library, London
Thursday 18 June
Manchester Writing School Summer Festival
Saturday 20 June
Dalkey Book Festival: Film, spoken word and dance performance
Sunday 28 June
Ledbury Poetry Festival: Dance performance
More info and book
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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 Spring/Summer 2026 include Audio Drama with Helen Cross, Jessica Dromgoole and Ben Lewis (The Hurst, 18 to 23 May); Nature Writing: Exploring Wild Language with Tim Dee, Joanna Pocock and Nancy Campbell (The Hurst, 25 to 30 May); Finish Your Novel with Michael Donkor, Kate Murray-Browne and Chris Power (Totleigh Barton, 1 to 6 June); Starting to Write with Tice Cin, Ralf Webb and Ashley Hickson-Lovence (Totleigh Barton, 15 to 20 June); The Craft of Character-Driven Fiction with Freya North, Matt Cain and Clare Pooley (The Hurst, 22 to 27 June); Writing Lives with John Grindrod, Lamorna Ash and Matt Morgan (Totleigh Barton, 13 to 18 July); Writing the World Through a Queer Lens with Nathan Evans and Santanu Bhattacharya (The Hurst, 13 to 16 July); and Inspiration, Support and Time to Write with Ben Pester, Kaiya Shang and Karolina Sutton (Totleigh Barton, 25 July to 1 August).
More info and book
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