Poets & Writers Theater

“The book is a kind of implosion, emotionally and intellectually, and you just wait for some kind of rhythm to form.... And then I will work all day, every day.” Nicola Barker, who won the 2017 Goldsmiths Prize for her novel H(a)ppy (William Heinemann, 2017), talks to Granta about her writing process and the difficulty of transitioning from writing on a digital screen to seeing the book in print form.

"John is so many miles from love now and home. This is the story of his strangest trip." In Beatlebone (Doubleday, 2015), Kevin Barry's second novel, John Lennon hopes to escape stardom by fleeing to a remote island off the west coast of Ireland with his shape-shifting driver Cornelius O'Grady leading them through a surreal, magical odyssey. The novel is shortlisted for the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize.

Ali Smith reads from her dual-narrative novel involving a British teenager mourning her mother's death and a fifteenth-century Italian painter. The novel, released tomorrow by Pantheon, was a finalist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Last month Smith was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize, an award recognizing fiction that breaks the mold.