Poets & Writers Theater

For this Conduit Club event hosted by Max Porter in London, Egyptian Canadian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad discusses his debut memoir, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Knopf, 2025), and reflects on the “derangement of language” while reporting the War on Terror and the threats faced by journalists in Gaza today.

“Each book has an individual, singular voice…some are very interior, some are very extravagant,” says Xiaolu Guo, one of the judges for the 2019 Booker Prize, about the thirteen titles nominated for the longlist of the prize. The “Booker Dozen” includes The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma, and Lanny by Max Porter. 

“The type moves and dances across the page—and it’s very much a book about sound on the page.” Max Porter talks about the unique typesetting in his second novel, Lanny (Graywolf Press, 2019), which is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, at the London Centre for Book Arts.

Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories (September Publishing, 2017) is a collection of “eight chilling tales” that are “set within the walls of England’s grandest houses, castles, and forts.” Inspired by visits to English Heritage’s historical properties, the spooky collection includes stories by Sarah Perry, Max Porter, and Jeanette Winterson, among others.

“To me, the world of novels often doesn’t feel real, and I was certainly quite aware of writing something kind of between poetry and prose.” Megan Hunter reads from her debut novel, The End We Start From (Grove Press, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and talks with Granta editorial director Max Porter about writing speculative fiction.