Talk: Beyond Science vs Art with Selali Fiamanya

‘The Diagnosis is in the Patient’s Story’: Beyond Science vs Art with Selali Fiamanya

7pm-8pm, Tuesday 7th October 2025

Novelist Selali Fiamanya trained as a scientist and medical doctor, and always found a tension between his aspirations as an artist and his life as a scientist. As he’ll suggest in this evening talk, however, such distinctions are thoroughly modern, and the sciences and the arts have more uniting than dividing them.

In Selali’s case, he understands both art and science as investigations into truth, and these investigations have historically taken many forms. In his own life and work, using the systematic skills of diagnosis and problem solving got him through the thorny aspects of writing of his novel, whilst learning how to communicate a story in an engaging way has helped him endlessly with patients.

In this hour-long event Selali will reflect on doctor-writers from Anton Chekhov to Adam Kay; as well as other historical and modern thinkers, scientists and artists, aiming to blur the boundary between fact and fiction and suggest that each makes the other stronger.

Selali Fiamanya is a novelist and essayist who is interested in the contradictions that define human experience. Before We Hit the Ground, his first novel, is due for publication in early 2025 having been runner-up for the PONTAS and JJ Bola Emerging Writer’s Prize as an unfinished manuscript.

Selali began writing through involvement with radical zine collective Skin Deep, where he wrote and edited fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual arts pieces on the themes of race and culture, which were distributed widely, free of charge. This collaborative approach was maintained with several other zine projects such as People of Content and whut?, all championing queer people of colour to produce collaborative, multi-disciplinary work.

Selali’s love for collaborative writing also took him to the traditional publishing world, having worked with a former refugee to write a collaborative narrative non-fiction piece for the anthology Will You Read This Please? (edited by Gladstone’s Library regular Joanna Cannon) about her mental health journey.