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A Cage Went In Search Of A Bird
Tuesday 19th November, 7pm, Online. Free for everyone.
A Cage Went In Search of A Bird is a collection of brand-new short stories written by some of the most original literary minds of today and inspired by Kafka - published to commemorate the centenary of his death.
We invite three of those writers to talk about their process of taking an idea, a mood or a line from Kafka’s work and use it to spark something new.
Join us for an engaging conversation between literary critic Hephzibah Anderson and Naomi Alderman, Tommy Orange and Leone Ross; three brilliant writers with very different approaches to this project.
Naomi Alderman is a novelist, broadcaster and videogame designer. Her novels include Disobedience (2006), The Liars’ Gospel (2012) and the best-selling The Power (2016), for which she won the Baileys Prize for Fiction and which was named by Barack Obama as one of his ten books of the year. Her work has been published in 23 languages. She was mentored by Margaret Atwood as part of the Rolex Arts Initiative, was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013 and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She presents Science Stories on BBC Radio 4, and is the co-creator and lead writer of the smartphone audio adventure Zombies, Run! She is currently working on the TV adaptation of The Power.
Tommy Orange is the New York Times bestselling author of There There (Alfred A. Knopf) winner of the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. There There was longlisted for the National Book Award for fiction 2018, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2019. It was deemed a Top Five Fiction Book of the Year by The New York Times and won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. There There was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His novel Wandering Stars was published by Alfred A Knopf in March 2024, and has been long listed for the Booker Prize.
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer and editor. Her work has been nominated for the Women’s Prize, the Goldsmiths award, the RSL Ondaatje award, and the Edge Hill Prize, among others. In 2022, she won the Manchester Prize for Fiction. The Times Literary Supplement called her ‘a master of detail...’ Ross has taught creative writing for more than twenty years. Her most recent novel is This One Sky Day aka Popisho [Faber & Faber, 2021] and she is the editor of Glimpse: A Black British Anthology of Speculative Fiction [Peepal Tree Press, 2022].
Journalist and critic Hephzibah Anderson has written for publications including The Times, The Economist and Vogue, and has been a columnist for both Prospect and The Critic. These days, she's most often found in the pages of The Observer, and also edits The Mail on Sunday's fiction coverage.