Books / Storysmith Books
Storysmith to host author events with Ben Lerner, Gwendoline Riley and Olivia Laing
Fresh from their recent author events with Joff Winterhart (Dear Historian), Matt Oldfield (Unbelievable Football) and returning guest Polly Barton (What Am I, A Dear?), Southville indie bookshop Storysmith will be hosting a series of literary evenings both in-store and at larger city venues, to accommodate demand.
At The Station on April 14, celebrated American author and poet Ben Lerner will be discussing his new novel Transcription with Olivia Sudjic – a “scintillating, stressful and poignant” book that Storysmith deem already to be in their favourites list for 2026.
It follows the narrator on his quest to conduct an interview – the last – with his 90-year-old mentor, Thomas, who is also father to his old college friend Max.
He goes on to drop the phone with which he was going to record their discussion, and must enter the frame without it – leading to “a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich our impoverish our connection to each other, that store or obliterate the memories that make us who we are”.
Ben Lerner will be talking about Transcription at The Station on April 14
Later that week, on April 16, novelist and short story writer Gwendoline Riley will be joining an audience after hours at the popular North Street bookshop to talk about her latest work, The Palm House.
It charts the course of friendship between Laura Miller and Edmund Putnam, both of whom are navigating challenges in their lives.
The novel, Storysmith contend, is “right up there with her best work – emotionally exacting, uncomfortably funny, devastatingly plausible – but somehow it’s also a media satire and an ode to city life, told in impossibly efficient prose”.
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Marking the paperback release of The Silver Book, its author, the multi-award-winning Sunday Times bestseller Olivia Laing, will be in conversation with Aneet Nijar at The Cube on June 17.
Laing, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has written eight books and counting, and her work has been translated into over 20 languages.
A fictional story set within a historical landscape, The Silver Book centres on the unfolding relationship between two lovers who meet by chance in 1970s Venice; Nicholas, a young English artist and Danilo Donati, a venerated designer working in Italian cinema to whom he becomes apprentice.
Olivia Laing will be discussing The Silver Book at The Cube on June 17
Find out more about all upcoming guest author events and regular bookclubs at Storysmith by visiting www.storysmithbooks.com, or follow @storysmithbooks.
Main photo: Storysmith Books
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