Journalist Jon Snow, politician Kenneth Clarke and heart surgeon Stephen Westaby are all part of this year’s twenty-fifth anniversary UEA Autumn Literary Festival, which will run from 11 October to 24 November.
The full line-up is:
Kazuo Ishiguro – Weds 11 Oct
Rebecca Stott – Weds 18 Oct
Kamila Shamsie – Weds 25 Oct
Richard Flanagan – Weds 1 Nov
Jon Snow – Fri 10 Nov
Stephen Westaby – Weds 15 Nov
Kenneth Clarke – Fri 24 Nov
Kazuo Ishiguro
Born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, Kazuo Ishiguro came to Britain aged five and studied at the University of Kent before completing his MA in Creative Writing at UEA. His works include An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans, Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant. Among his many awards are the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, the Booker Prize and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He was awarded an OBE in 1995.
Rebecca Stott
Prof of Creative Writing at UEA, Rebecca was born in Cambridge in 1964 and holds a BA, MA and PhD from the University of York. Her first novel, Ghostwalk, published in 2007, was a national bestseller. She’s also author of The Coral Thief, Darwin and the Barnacle and Darwin’s Ghost: In Search of the First Evolutionists. Her latest book, In the Days of Rain, is a memoir of her experience growing up in a religious cult.
Kamila Shamsie
Kamila was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1973, and went to university in the US. She is the author of six novels, including In the City by the Sea, Salt and Saffron and A God in Every Stone. Three of her novels received awards from Pakistan’s Academy of Letters and she’s currently long-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
Richard Flanagan
Richard is descended from Irish convicts transported to Tasmania, where he was born in 1961 during the Great Famine. His first novel, Death of a River Guide, was published in 1994 and his other novels include Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist as well as his most recent book, First Person. He’s won multiple awards including the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Jon Snow
Jon was born in Sussex in 1947 and has travelled widely around the world reporting, including the US, Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and El Salvador. His many awards include the Richard Dimbleby BAFTA Award for Best Factual Contribution to Television (2005) and Royal Television Society awards for Journalist of the Year (2006) and Presenter of the Year (2009). He is the longest-running presenter of Channel 4 News, where he began in 1989.
Stephen Westaby
Born in 1948, Stephen is a world-famous British heart surgeon who has performed more than 11,000 operations during his 35-year career and pioneered a number of experimental treatments involving the use of heart pumps, artificial hearts and circulatory support technology. His book, Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table, in part a memoir and partly an account of a series of challenging operations and was on the Sunday Times bestseller list.
Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth was born in Nottinghamshire in 1940, graduated from Cambridge University and is a qualified barrister. He has served in various ministerial roles in three different Conservative governments, most notably as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and has contested leadership of the party on three occasions. He has been an MP since 1970 and is a strong supporter of Britain’s membership of the EU.
“In the 25 years we’ve run the Festival, we’ve welcomed five Nobel Prize winners, multiple winners of the Pulitzer, National Book Award, Booker and Orange prizes, as well as other prize winners from all over the world,” said UEA’s Prof Christopher Bigsby. “We’ve featured actors, biographers, historians, journalists, musicians, novelists, playwrights, poets, politicians and scientists. The list is an international Who’s Who of the world’s great writers, past and present, including the late William Golding, John Fowles, Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Harold Pinter, Peter Ustinov and Arthur Miller.”
The events takes place in UEA’s Lecture Theatre 1 at 7pm and all profits go towards student scholarships – £250,000 has been raised since the Festival began.
A season ticket for all seven events costs £48 (concessions £40) and individual tickets are £8 (students £4). For more information or to book go to www.uea.ac.uk/litfest/tickets
