Vital Discussions

Deborah Levy and Merve Emre

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This event took place on 5 November 2021

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Vital Discussions
Deborah Levy and Merve Emre

Watch event again now

This event took place on 5 November 2021

Vital Discussions On Demand is a series of conversations created by the Royal Society for Literature.

Join Deborah Levy and Merve Emre as they discuss what Virginia Woolf means to them and the enduring influence of her work on their own writing.This event is presented in partnership with LitHub.

This wide-ranging conversation will feature an exploration of Woolf’s strength and fragility, how reading writers of the past shapes the authors of today, and what we still have to learn from Woolf and her work.

You can discover upcoming events from the RSL on their website here. You can also become a member of the RSL, offering the benefits and joys of a literary festival and book club, rolled into one, all year round. Purchase an RSL Digital Events Pass to access all RSL events for just £25 for a year.

Speakers

Royal Society of Literature

Charity

'Founded in 1820, the RSL is the UK’s charity for the advancement of literature. We act as a voice for the value of literature, engage people in appreciating literature, and encourage and honour writers.

Today, alongside our world-class events programme, we support authors both established and emerging with awards and grants, and manage an Outreach Programme to inspire the next generation of readers and writers.'

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Deborah Levy

Author

Deborah Levy FRSL is the author of seven novels: Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved, Billy and Girl, Swimming Home, Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Booker Prize. Her short story collection, Black Vodka, was nominated for the International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. She is also the author of a formally innovative and emotionally daring trilogy of memoirs, a living autobiography on writing, gender politics and philosophy, the final volume of which, Real Estate, was published in May 2021.

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Merve Emre

Professor of English

Merve Emre is associate professor of English at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, The Ferrante Letters, and The Personality Brokers, which was selected as one of the best books of 2018 by the New York Times, the Economist, NPR and CBC, and informs the CNN/HBO Max documentary feature film Persona. She is the editor of The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway and The Norton Modern Library Mrs. Dalloway.

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