Dreams for Lammas: a gala of new local writing
Thursday 1 August 2024, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £3/£2
Some call it Lammas. Some call it Lughnasadh, Lughnasa or Lúnasa. Whatever your culture, in the Northern Hemisphere, early August has traditionally been a time when the start of harvest season is celebrated.
Our third gala of local writing welcomes your poems and short stories that explore this broad theme.
Coming up online!
The Age of the Algorithm: Julia Bell with Philip Seargeant
Monday 17 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
Writer and creative writing lecturer Julia Bell talks to the OU’s Philip Seargeant about how the implementation of AI impacts writers’ freedom of expression, covering topics from augmented writing applications’ influence on style and content to ways that techno-capitalism exploits and monetises human behaviour.
Literature and Offence: Mark Rosenblatt with Monika Smialkowska
Monday 10 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
Is theatre still the ideal venue for exploring challenging, complex and even potentially offensive topics? Dr Monika Smialkowska discusses these issues with Mark Rosenblatt, author of the new play Giant, a fictionalised account of the circumstances leading up to an interview that Roald Dahl gave in which he expressed a series of explicitly antisemitic opinions.
Historical Cancel Culture: Charlotte Gordon with Jupiter Jones
Monday 24 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
Charlotte Gordon, author of Radical Outlaws, talks to Jupiter Jones about the eighteenth-century writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and how, after her untimely death, Wollstonecraft was effectively ‘cancelled’, due largely to the publication of a scandalous tell-all memoir.
Translation and Censorship: Sawad Hussain/Monica Cure w Daria Chernysheva
Monday 31 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
In this event, we explore literature in translation with a specific focus on censorship and free speech through the lens of two novels that both address these concerns: Liliana Corobca’s The Censor’s Notebook and Bothayna al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library.
Free Speech and the Politics of Literature - Panel Event (in-person or livestream)
Friday 11 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 6.00pm - 7.00pm; £10/£7/£Free
Literature has always been on the front line in debates about free speech – and never more so than today. Join a panel of writers (Aki Schilz, Henry Porter, Sabrina Mahfouz and Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill) whose distinct experiences and expertise on the issue of freedom of expression can help make sense of our paradoxical times.
Edward Stourton: Confessions with Rob Gifford (in-person or livestream)
Wednesday 9 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 7.00pm; £10/£7/£5
One of British broadcasting’s best-known names reflects on his life against the context of a world that has changed dramatically during his forty-year career. As, of course, has Edward Stourton, who - in conversation with Rob Gifford - shares his remarkable journey with his familiar candour, humour and insight.
Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time with Eley Williams (in-person or livestream)
Friday 11 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £10/£7/£5
In Kaliane Bradley’s astonishing debut novel, The Ministry of Time, a mysterious government ministry gathers ‘expats’ from history to test the limits of time travel. In this fabulous fusion of genre and ideas, she asks how you can defy history when history is living in your house?
Raising Voices: A Chorus of Local Writers (in-person or livestream)
Saturday 12 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, 5.00pm - 6.30pm; Free (donations welcome)
Tales from the city, from green spaces, from home. From Midsummer, Midwinter, Lammas, the future, the past and more... Join us for a medley of readings chosen from our #MinK anthologies and online events that celebrate the depth and quality of the local writing shared over the last eight festival years.
Mark Billingham: The Wrong Hands with Sarah Pinborough (in-person or livestream)
Saturday 12 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £10/£7/£5
Multi-bestselling Mark Billingham – one of our most acclaimed and popular crime writers – brings his brilliant, twisty new detective novel The Wrong Hands to MK, in conversation with internationally bestselling author Sarah Pinborough. Join us for a criminally entertaining festival finale!
Dreams for Beltane: celebrating the First of May
Thursday 1 May 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £3/£2 (selected writers enter free)
Whether you celebrate ancient pagan ritual, International Labour Day or any of the other anniversaries that 1 May marks, submit your poetry, flash fiction or creative non-fiction for our online event, Dreams for Beltane. Entries close on 12 April 2025.
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An Evening with Andrey Kurkov: The Literature and Politics of Ukraine
Wednesday 11 June 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £8/6
Ukrainian novelist and author of the international bestseller Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov, is an ambassador for his country’s literature, culture, identity and independence. Now writing and commenting at the forefront of a 21st-century war, he shares his insights into the intersection of literature, politics, and language.
You and Me: local writers mark International Day of Friendship
Wenesday 30 July 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £3/£2 (selected writers enter free)
Friendship is one of the foundations of human experience. Young or old, male or female, single or married, straight or otherwise, our friends are a source of joy, comfort, support - and sometimes otherwise! Submit your poem, flash fiction or creative non-fiction for our online event, You and Me. Entries close on 30 June 2025.