Monday 14th October, 7.30pm
Lola’s Bar, Lower Ground Floor, The Hippodrome Casino, Main Entrance, London WC2H 7JH
SPEAKERS:
Jenny Lindsay, poet and essayist
Kate Clanchy, author
Matthew Hamilton, literary agent
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches”. Ray Bradbury, 1979
For the past 35 years, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the eventual murderous attack it inspired have served as the ultimate warning to authors. Such extreme threats to the safety of writers have not gone away but as Bradbury realised, literary censorship can take many forms. Our highest profile children’s author, J.K. Rowling, has had her books boycotted and even burned not by regimes but by readers.
And there seems to be a problem within the publishing industry itself. Authors report the subjection of their manuscripts to oversight by sensitivity readers; publishers resile from contracts when controversy arises; grant-giving bodies withdraw support when recipients speak out of line; booksellers, shop staff and librarians have refused to stock or display books with which they disagree; authors are no-platformed from literary festivals and literary societies which are supposed to defend authors have turned against them.
A new book by award-winning poet and essayist Jenny Lindsay offers a detailed account of the culture of ‘hounding’ that those accused of holding heretical beliefs have experienced, many of them writers and including herself. Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars is described by academic Professor Sarah Pedersen as ‘an excellent and profoundly angering analysis’ and by philosopher Kathleen Stock, who really was ‘hounded out’ of academia, as a ‘shocking compendium’.
Join us to hear Jenny Lindsay discuss the issues in the publishing world with literary agent Matthew Hamilton and Orwell prize-winning author Kate Clanchy.
Matthew has gone to bat for numerous fiction and non-fiction authors who have been threatened with cancellation and is on the Free Speech Union’s Writers’ Advisory Council. In 2021, Kate Clanchy notoriously had her contract ended by her publisher of 25 years, Picador, after online reviewers accused her bestselling teaching memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me of ‘racism’ and ‘ableism’. Despite the support of many of the former pupils described in the book, all her works were de-published, in a case which sent concerned waves throughout the publishing world.
There will, of course, be plenty of time for audience Q and A.
The discussion will be followed by a book-signing and social.
About our speakers:
Jenny Lindsay is a poet, performer and essayist based in Scotland. A formerly celebrated and award-winning producer of live literature events in Scotland, she is also the author of two full-length and two pamphlet poetry collections, two poetry/ theatre stage-shows, and has produced commissioned work across poetry, prose, and theatre for numerous publications and institutions including The Dark Horse, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Irish Pages and the Daily Mail. Her film-poem The Imagined We won the inaugural John Byrne Award for Critical Thinking in 2020. Hounded is her debut non-fiction book.
Kate Clanchy was first published by Picador in 1996. In the following 25 years she won a Forward Prize for Poetry, a Somerset Maugham and Saltire Award, the National Short Story Prize and VS Pritchett Award, the Writer’s Guild Award and Orwell Prize among many others. In 2018 Picador published England, Poems from a School, an anthology of her school pupils’ poetry, to great acclaim. In 2021 Picador apologised for ‘the emotional anguish experienced’ by people reading her best-selling teaching memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, and subsequently depublished all her books. Kate is currently working out why and enjoying the experience of being published by Swift Press.
Matthew Hamilton is a literary agent and the founder of the Hamilton Agency which represents serious and popular non-fiction, with a particular interest in political writing from across the ideological spectrum, music, literary memoir, biography, football and entertainment. Recent bestsellers include The War on the West by Douglas Murray, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning by Nigel Biggar, An Immigrant’s Love Letter To The West by Konstantin Kisin and The New Puritans by Andrew Doyle.
£10 for FSU members.
£15 for members of the public.
Pre-order HOUNDED: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars by Jenny Lindsay for only £10.50 at check-out, for collection and signing on the night or order it to be delivered (UK only)for £14.50 using this link [to be added after 27/08/2024].
Online tickets: (NON FSU MEMBERS)
If you can’t make it to London, you can join online for £5. (FSU members can join free of charge, using the link provided in FSU emails).
SPECIAL DINING OFFER
The Hippodrome invites you to enjoy a meal before or after the event at one of its restaurants. Show your confirmation email to staff to receive a 25% discount at Chop Chop or the Heliot Steakhouse. Both are rated ‘exceptional’ on Opentable, with Heliot considered one of London’s very best steakhouses and Chop Chop by Four Seasons already hailed as one of the West End’s best Chinese restaurants only a year after launch. Please book here for Chop Chop or here for Heliot then show your confirmation email when you arrive at the restaurant. (Offer eligible only on Monday 14th October 2024.)
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