Talks
Join local writer and editor and host, Sara Jafari, in this easy going and engaging event where you’ll be introduced to the work of up and coming writers, Ashani Lewis (Winter Animals), Oisín McKenna (Evenings and Weekends) and Sarah Marsh (A Sign of Your Own) and participate in a conversation about their path to publication.
Please note this recording is live for 7 days after the first broadcast.
About the artists:
Ashani Lewis is a novelist and short-story writer based in London. Her debut novel, Winter Animals, was released last month with Dialogue Books, and her upcoming collection of short stories is due out later this year. Winter Animals is a dark meditation on the dangers and seductive power of youthful idealism, and the slippages between friendship and love, set in the mountains of North America. Ashani’s writing has won the Tower Poetry Prize and the Alpine Fellowship Writing Competition, as well as being featured in Harper’s Bazaar and Joyland. She was a winner of the London Writers Awards 2021 in their literary fiction category. She’s currently working on her second novel, which will be published in 2025.
Oisín McKenna is an award-winning writer and artist, working in theatre, video, and fiction. His work has been supported by Arts Council England and Arts Council Ireland, and he has worked with the BBC, ICA, DAZED, Hackney Showroom, The Abbey Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival, Project Arts Centre and more. His debut novel Evenings and Weekends will be published by Fourth Estate (UK) and Mariner Books (US) in 2024. He is a recipient of a 2022 London Writers Award. He’s interested in the ways that political, economic and social conditions shape how we act, think, and feel at particular places and times.
Sara Jafari is a British-Iranian author and editor, based in New Cross. She is the author of The Mismatch and People Change (Penguin Random House, 2021 and 2023). Longlisted for Spread the Word’s Life Writing Prize, her writing has also been published in gal-dem and The Good Journal, among other publications. She is also a contributor of the essay collection "I Will Not Be Erased": Our stories about growing up as people of colour (Walker Books, 2019), and Who’s Loving You (Trapeze, 2021). She also single-handedly runs TOKEN Magazine, a literary and arts print magazine featuring under-represented writers and artists. She has worked in the publishing industry for over six years, most recently working at Puffin, Penguin Random House where she worked as an editor, actively commissioning young fiction, middle-grade and YA/crossover non-fiction and fiction titles. She currently works as an editor on a freelance basis for publishers and individuals.
Sarah Marsh was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish prize in 2019 and selected for the London Library Emerging Writers programme in 2020. A Sign of Her Own is her first novel, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness. She lives in London.
