Hearth 2024
Saturday 3rd February
A limited number of day tickets (£90) and afternoon tickets (£50) will be available on the door on the day of the event while stocks last.

Our cosy mini-festival is back, so save the date! We know that our Hearth attendees like to plan ahead, so are offering the tickets now in anticipation that you will want to secure your place on the day. 

Morning tickets include a two course lunch with a filter coffee or tea, evening tickets include a two course dinner with filter coffee or tea. Full day tickets include both lunch and dinner. 


10.30am – 11.30am: A Kitchen of One's Own with Alison Binney 



Alison Binney is a poet whose work explores relationships, be that with ourselves, with people, or with our landscape. Alison came relatively late to poetry, only finding the space for her own creativity once she reduced her working hours. For over twenty-five years Alison has taught English in state secondary schools as well as training new teachers at Cambridge University. Once she turned to poetry, success came quickly, with Alison’s debut pamphlet, Other Women’s Kitchens, winning the 2020 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition before being published by Seren the following year. 

In 'A Kitchen of One’s Own', Alison will explore the significance of kitchens as domestic spaces which offer rich material for poetry, reading from her Mslexia prize-winning pamphlet Other Women’s Kitchens, and also from her latest work, arguing for the kitchen as both the literal and the symbolic heart of a house, and for its worth, not only as a traditionally female space, but also as a fundamentally human one.

Alison’s poems are often deeply personal, and they seem to strike a chord with even the most reluctant listener. As she says, ‘I particularly enjoy giving readings where people tell me they don’t usually like poetry but enjoyed hearing mine.’

11.30am - 12pm: Tea Break

12pm – 1pm: Climbing into Another’s Skin: What Happens When We Read and Write with Eleanor Wasserberg 

 

Eleanor Wasserberg is a writer and teacher. After studying at the universities of Oxford and East Anglia, she published her debut novel Foxlowe in 2016. An unsettling tale of a community in self-imposed exile, it was a finalist in the Shirley Jackson Awards 2017. Eleanor followed this with The Light at the End of the Day, another tale of exile – this time in an entirely different historical period. 

After time spent living in Kerala, Paris and London, Eleanor now lives and works in Norwich. She is working on her third novel, a ghost story set on the Norfolk coast. 

Her talk is entitled 'Climbing into Another’s Skin: What Happens When We Read and Write'.

When we read fiction, can we really get to know other people whose stories we’re reading? What does that mean when we’re reading historical fiction – can we really learn about other places, other times, other worlds? And what does this mean if you’re a writer rather than a reader – should you take care whose voices you borrow? 

Eleanor will consider all these questions and more in her Hearth talk. Eleanor will draw on her novel – 2020’s The Light at the End of the Day – as well as her first novel Foxlowe, where she explored the closed world of cult communities, in a discussion that roves across questions of ethics, creativity, and empathy. Eleanor will read extracts from her novels and from her work in progress, and will also invite the audience to try some creative writing of their own. 


1pm - 2.30pm: Lunch (two courses with a cup of tea or filter coffee, included in ticket) 

2.30pm – 3.30pm: What the Archives Can Tell Us with Frederick Bricknell in conversation with Andrea Russell



Many visitors to Gladstone’s Library will pass an anonymous brown door; only a few will realise what lies behind that door are some of the world’s most key documents when it comes to Britain’s role in the slave trade. 

In this hour-long discussion between the Warden of Gladstone’s Library and Fred Bricknell, a researcher in the area, this talk will guide the audience through the documents held here in Hawarden, and what they mean for our understanding of history. 

Frederick Bricknell is a PhD researcher in the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull, investigating the environmental impacts of slavery and indentured labour in nineteenth-century British Guyana. In 2023 he was the recipient of Gladstone’s Library Eileen Stamper scholarship, allowing him to spend a fortnight working intensively with items from the Glynne-Gladstone Archive. 

Andrea Russell is the Warden of Gladstone’s Library, a post she has held since October 2022. For the past 10 years she has been involved in theological education and comes to Hawarden from Oxford Diocese where she was Director of Formation for Ministry. Her role as Warden increasingly involves thinking about how the Library functions as a place of education, conversation and debate. 

3.30 - 4pm: Tea break

4pm - 5pm: Avocado Anxiety with Louise Gray

We are all part of an interconnected world, and nothing proves that quite like eating. We all eat, and for many of us, we share what we eat on social media. Or do we? As the pressure grows to share lives that are as healthy and as environmentally-conscious as they can be, what does this mean for those who grow, pick, and transport these foods? 

In her Hearth talk environmental journalist Louise Gray shares some of the stories from her second book, Avocado Anxiety. As Louise will share, she visited farms, interviewed scientists and tried to grow her own, to dig up the dirt on what’s in our shopping baskets.

Louise is now a freelance writer, after five years as the The Daily Telegraph’s Environmental Correspondent. She specialises in writing about food, farming and climate change, and is passionate about focusing on how individuals can make a real difference through the choices we make. She has written on these issues for The Sunday Times, Scottish Field, the Guardian and The Spectator, and appeared on BBC television and radio. 

Louise’s writing is known for its original approach to some of the most pressing issues of our time. Her award-winning first book, The Ethical Carnivore, described Louise’s experiences of eating only meat she had killed herself. In 2020 Louise widened the focus – from her own eating to the world’s appetite. Avocado Anxiety was named one of the Times environmental book of the year for its meticulously-researched, informative account of where our food comes from. 

5pm - 5.30pm: Break

5.30pm – 6.30pm: Panel. Our authors join representatives from Gladstone's Library for a freewheeling literary discussion. 

6.30pm: Dinner (two courses with a cup of tea or filter coffee, included in ticket) 

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Please note, tickets cannot be refunded or used for another event if ticketholders are unable to attend. All ticket purchases support us to care for the Library building and the collections it holds. As a charity, Gladstone's Library receives no government funding, so all purchases, Gift Aid and donations, are deeply appreciated.

You now have the option to save your tickets in your Gladstone Bag! For more information see here.

A print and collect service is available to those without access to email facilities for a small charge to cover our admin costs. Call 01244 532350 or email [email protected] for more information. Printed tickets will be available to collect from Reception before the event.

Hearth is back! Taking place on Saturday 11th February, our cosy and intimate mini-festival features four of the most exciting writers on the scene.

Pull up a chair beside the fire and listen to fiction, poetry and short story authors from the comfort of the Gladstone Room lounge.

This event tends to sell fast, so save the date. You can book a bedroom too via the 'book a stay' button on the top right of this website.

More information about online tickets and the running order coming soon. In the meantime, if you want to book now to attend in person, you can! Click here for tickets.

Full day tickets are £90 and include access to all four talks, the evening author panel and a two course lunch and dinner with hot drink. Half day tickets are £50 and include a two course lunch or dinner with hot drink.

Online tickets for selected events are available here: These are £10 per talk.

Our 2023 Hearth author events are:


10.30am to 11.30am (online tickets available)
Rewiring the Mind: Animals, Humans, and other Neurodivergent Narratives with David Hartley, author of Fauna.

As a writer of both human and non-human characters, and a neurodiversity researcher, writer David Hartley often finds himself thinking about what it is to be neurodivergent. How can thinking ‘neurodivergently’ help us reach new understandings? Where do we find neurodiversity in the books that we read? Who can – and should – write neurodiverse characters? In his talk, David looks back at writers such as Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf and Philip K. Dick, as well as sharing work from those writing now, like poet Joanne Limburg and the children’s author Elle McNicol.

David Hartley is a writer and neurodiversity researcher who recently completed a PhD in creative writing. David’s been writing award-winning short fiction since 2013 and his latest, 2021’s Fauna, was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award’s Best Short Story Collection prize. A seasoned spoken-word artist, David has performed at festivals across the North West, including Bluedot, the festival that celebrates art and science, and he’s part of the Autism Through Cinema team, collaborating across the UK to discover more about the role of the moving image in understandings of autism.

12 noon to 1pm (online tickets available)

The Language of Food: The Unknown Story of a Domestic Goddess with Annabel Abbs, author of The Language of Food



Eliza Acton invented the recipe and wrote the UK’s first best-selling recipe book in 1845. The Language of Food – a novel that has sold in 20 territories and been optioned by CBS for a TV series – tells her story. Described by the New York Times as one of last year’s best historical novels and by The Times as ‘winningly told’, The Language of Food is a true story of bankruptcy, thwarted love, recipe theft and friendship. Annabel – hailed by The Guardian as ‘one of the best historical novelists today’ – will introduce us to the extraordinary life and times of the first domestic goddess, Eliza Acton.

Annabel is a writer of highly researched fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been longlisted, shortlisted and winners of several awards including the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, the Banff Award and the Impress Prize for New Writers. Her books – include Times Book of the Year, Frieda: The Real Lady Chatterley and Windswept: Why Women Walk - have been translated into over 30 languages.

2.30pm to 3.30pm (online tickets available)
Why the Georgians Loved Ancient Greece with Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of Pandora

The question that Susan Stokes-Chapman is asked most consistently about her smash hit debut novel Pandora is: what does Pandora’s Box have to do with Georgian London? Well, come to Hearth and she’ll tell you! We don’t want to spoil it for you but in a nutshell – the Georgians were crazy for the Classics. Susan will share pictures and even some artefacts to show you how anyone who was anyone in 1800s Britain altered their houses and clothes in the style of Mediterranean antiquity.

Susan Stokes-Chapman was born in 1985 and grew up in the historic Georgian city of Lichfield, Staffordshire. She studied for four years at Aberystwyth University, graduating with a BA in Education and English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. Pandora was a Sunday Times bestseller, and no wonder – it tells the tale of Dora Blake, an aspiring jewellery artist who lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents' famed shop of antiquities. 

When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle's suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young antiquarian scholar. While Edward sees the ancient vase as key to unlocking his academic future, Dora sees it as a chance to restore the shop to its former glory, and to escape her nefarious uncle…

4pm to 5pm (in-peron only)
Speaking – and Hearing - Poetry with Jonathan Davidson, author of A Commonplace

Come and join us for a rare chance to be your own ‘performer of poetry’ in the Gladstone Room! Reading poetry is often a quiet, mindful, solitary activity – so what can we gain by making it a verbal, mindful, shared activity? In an event led by poet, writer, and literature activist Jonathan Davidson, you can choose to share your favourite poem with the world. With kind applause for all and a suite of poems read by Jonathan himself, this is a warm, welcoming way of discovering a new favourite poem. Not a fan of public speaking? Don’t worry, listening is very welcome too.

Jonathan Davidson is a poet, writer, and literature activist whose passion is helping others experience the poetic. His award-winning poetry has been widely published, and he has also written memoir and criticism, as well as radio dramas broadcast by the BBC. Much of his work focusses on how writing – particularly poetry – is experienced by readers and listeners. Early in his career Jonathan won the Eric Gregory award, awarded by the Society of Authors to the best poets under 30; since then he has gone on to publish three more poetry pamphlets.

Author picture by Lee Allen


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Please note that tickets for this event are e-tickets. Book online and have your ticket emailed directly to you – there is no need to print out an e-ticket for a digital event.

You now have the option to save your tickets in your Gladstone Bag! For more information see here. All livestreamed events are recorded and made available to Gladstone Bag holders for 14 days after upload (please note, this may take time as these must be individually edited and manually uploaded). Videos then appear in our archive which is permanently accessible to Friends of the Library.

A print and collect service is available to those without access to email facilities for a small charge to cover our admin costs. Call 01244 532350 or email [email protected] for more information. Printed tickets will be available to collect from Reception before the event.

Please note, tickets cannot be refunded or transferred if ticketholders are unable to attend. All ticket purchases support us to care for the Library building and the collections it holds. As a charity, Gladstone's Library receives no government funding, so all purchases, Gift Aid and donations, are deeply appreciated.

Click here to book in-person tickets. Subject to availability. Online tickets available here.. 

Hearth is back! Improve your writing, find out how to publish your novel, get hints and tips and find inspiration during our February micro-festival. 

Saturday February 5th 2022



(Tickets for the Hearth micro-festival have been limited to ensure we are able to follow Welsh Government social distancing rules. In-person tickets have sold out for now. However, you can join in online by clicking here. You can also email [email protected] and request to be placed on the waiting list for 2023)

Pull up a chair, gather around the hearth and indulge in a day of stimulating and entertaining conversation.

Hearth began in 2013 and is held every year on a Saturday in February. As Gladfest's younger sibling it aims to distill all the best bits of festival life - book chat, comfortable chairs, tea and cake, a good glass of wine - into a single day. With opportunities to meet, talk and create with four authors over a day of book-based events, it's one of our most popular events and regularly sells out. You can come for the full day or if time is tight, a morning or afternoon. We also reserve a few tickets for individual events for the truly time-pressed.

Hearth in 2022

Our Hearth line up for this year features four writers whose works and talks will stir the imagination. The individual events are:

10.30am - 11.30am: Writing Velázquez and Visual Art with Amy Sackville

For writer Amy Sackville visual art has always been an inspiration, particularly the Spanish Golden Age. Amy’s love of this period led her to write Painter to the King, called ‘one of the finest historical novels of recent years’ by the writer Sarah Perry. It’s a portrait of the artist Diego Velázquez and his life in the court of Philip IV of Spain; a time of upheaval, grief, and startlingly original paintings. Starting with her own novel Amy will talk about how her understanding of Velázquez’ work, and artistic work more generally, shaped her own process of writing. 

Amy Sackville is a writer and novelist who teaches creative writing at the University of Kent. Her books have won several awards. Her novel The Still Point won the John Llewellyn Rhys award for the best writing by a young author. It was a powerful literary debut, weaving historical research into a compelling reflection on the distances of history and the discoveries to be found there. Her novel Orkney won a Somerset Maugham award. 

12pm-1pm: Extra-Ordinary Voices: Recovering Voices Lost to History with Alice Jolly

Writing a book in an extra-ordinary first-person voice is a major risk for a writer. Alice Jolly’s novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile is written in the Gloucestershire dialect of the nineteenth century. Her new novel Dr Asperger’s Dilemma features the voice of one of Asperger’s patients. Why is voice so important to understanding the past? How can the modern reader enter the minds and sensibilities of characters who lived in other cultures and times? Why are women so often left out of mainstream historical narratives and can fiction contribute to widening our understanding of the past? Join Alice as she discusses the challenges of recreating the lost voices of history.  

Alice Jolly is a novelist, playwright, and memoirist who also teaches on the Mst in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Her memoir, Dead Babies and Seaside Towns (2015) won the Pen Ackerley Prize for a literary memoir of excellence, while her short story Ray the Rottweiler won the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize 2014, awarded by the Royal Society of Literature. Her most recent books include Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile (short-listed for the Ondaatje Prize and runner-up in the Rathbones Folio Prize, which celebrates the world’s best English-language literature). She received an O.Henry Award in 2021 (given to the 20 best short stories published in the US in that year). Her short story collection From Far Around They Saw Us Burn will be published by Unbound in summer 2022.

2pm-3pm: Through a Glass, Darkly: Writing and the Work of Watching with Carys Bray

Join Carys Bray as she outlines her challenge to Graham Greene’s famous assertion, made while studying a pair of grieving parents in a hospital. He stated that ‘there is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer’, surely referring to his own ability to study, rather than sympathise with, the parents. Rather than icy isolation, Carys wants to suggest that ‘to love someone is to put yourself in their place’, arguing that careful watching allows a writer to develop empathy, authenticity and an eye for detail. In this hour Carys will explore stories ranging from deeply personal – sitting beside her daughter in a neonatal unit – to Bible stories of Jesus asking the disciples to wait and watch with him, to wry, funny extracts from her own novels. 

Carys Bray’s first novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, was chosen for Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Desmond Elliot Prize. She was awarded the Scott Prize for her debut short-story collection, Sweet Home. She’s also the author of The Museum of You. She lives in Southport with her husband and four children. Her latest novel, When the Lights Go Out, was described by Joanna Cannon (a Gladfest favourite here at the Library!) as ‘filled with the most incredible tenderness and wisdom’

3.30pm-4.30pm: 

Restoration, Hybridity and Survival: Sources of Inspiration with poet Rosalind Hudis, author of Restorations. 

Rosalind Hudis's poetry dips into many-faced acts of salvage, survival, and transformation - be it of memory, a culture, an painting, a person. Aided by slides and sound, Rosalind will explain some of her sources of inspiration. She'll also read from her own work and some connected works by other authors. You are invited to share your own pieces on the theme of restoration. Not to be missed!  

Rosalind Hudis grew up in Suffolk, but after a nomadic period making a living in different countries, and areas, of Britain, settled in West Wales where she has lived for many years with her partner, the puppeteer Tony Heales, and her family. A person of very mixed ethnic background, with roots as far apart as Moldova and Senegal, she finds Wales to be the place that is home. A onetime musician, she has also written from an early age, and now works as a freelance writer, editor, reviewer and tutor. Her poetry collections Terra Ignata (2013) and Tilt (2014) have won prizes and commendations, and her latest collection is Restorations (2021), praised for its ‘intense feeling’ and rich human detail. She teaches creative writing at the University of Wales.

5pm-6pm: Panel (available to in-person full-day and afternoon ticket holders)


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Full day in-person tickets are £65. Half-day tickets are £40. These include food. Individual event tickets are also available. Book them by clicking here. 

Individual online event tickets are available here. Online tickets are £8. 

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As part of a new access initiative here at the Library, all our non-residential events will have one free place available. Please email [email protected] for details. 

Please note that tickets for this event are e-tickets. Book online and have your ticket emailed directly to you – there is no need to print out an e-ticket for a digital event. 

You now have the option to save your tickets in your Gladstone Bag! For more information see here.

A print and collect service is available to those without access to email facilities for a small charge to cover our admin costs. Call 01244 532350 or email [email protected] for more information. Printed tickets will be available to collect from Reception before the event.

Hearth 2020

In 2020 Hearth will take place on Saturday, 1st February in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

10.30am - 11.30am: Louise Gray - The Ethical Carnivore

For a full year, writer Louise Gray was an ethical carnivore. In what Patrick Barkham called a ‘humane, adventurous and wonderfully illuminating exploration’, Louise learned to stalk, shoot and fish, befriending countrymen and women and reconnecting with nature. She made squirrel stir-fry and shucked oysters, shot rabbits and hunted red deer. The Ethical Carnivore is a funny, witty and intelligent look at one of the largest issues of our time: eating meat ethically. 

Louise Gray is now a freelance writer, after five years as the The Daily Telegraph’s Environmental Correspondent. She specialises in writing about food, farming and climate change, and is passionate about focusing on how individuals can make a real difference through the choices we make. She has written on these issues for The Sunday Times, Scottish Field, the Guardian and The Spectator, and appeared on BBC television and radio. The Ethical Carnivore is her first book.

12pm - 1pm: Patrice Lawrence - Rose, Interrupted

18 months ago, 17-year old Rose and 13-year old Rudder escaped a strict religious sect with their mum. They are still trying to make sense of the world outside – how to make sense of it all with no more rules about clothes, books, films, and music, and no technology ban, as guidance? How to get along without the community and certainty that the sect gave them? It doesn’t help that their mum works all the time, so she can pay the rent on their cramped, smelly, one-bed flat above a kebab shop in Hackney. Being a teenager is hard enough, but it’s even harder in a world you’ve never known…

Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer and one of the hottest names in publishing. Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy (2016), announced her writing with a bang, winning the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction, as well as being shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award. Patrice went on to write Indigo Donut (2017), which was Book of the Week in The Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer. Both books were nominated for the Carnegie Award, Britain’s most important award for writing for children. Patrice published three novels this year including Diver’s Daughter and Rose, Interrupted – also nominated for the Carnegie Award. Though the books tell tales of young people in very different historical periods, both demonstrate The Guardian’s view that ‘what sets [Patrice’s] writing apart is her skill in getting to the raw heart of her characters’.

1pm - 2pm: Lunch in Food for Thought (included with Morning and Day tickets)

2pm - 3pm: Miranda Kaufmann, Kate Morrison and Patrice Lawrence in conversation - Untold Stories of the Black Tudors

Contemporary understandings of British history are becoming increasingly nuanced, thanks to a series of books exploring the lives of black British citizens. From David Olusoga’s Black and British (2016) to the recent colour-blind casting of Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield adaptation, the face of Britain looks more varied and interesting than ever. The books of Patrice Lawrence, Miranda Kaufmann and Kate Morrison have significantly altered our understanding of what the Tudor world looked like. Kate’s novel, A Book of Secrets (2019), tells the story of Susan Charlewood, taken from Ghana as a baby and now, as a young girl, hunting for her brother through an Elizabethan underworld. Miranda’s non-fiction Black Tudors: The Untold Story tells exactly that – the untold story of hundreds of Africans living in Tudor England. Patrice’s Diver’s Daughter: A Tudor Story (2019) tells the story of Eve, a young West African girl living with her mother in the Southwark slums of Elizabethan London. Join them as they discuss the practice of writing untold stories.

Miranda Kaufmann is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, an Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She read History at Christ Church, Oxford, before working as a freelance historian and journalist. Miranda is also currently lead historian on the Colonial Countryside project which is working with ten National Trust properties, schools, and creative writers, to explore historic links with Caribbean slavery. She now lives in North Wales, where she is writing her next book, Heiresses: Slavery & The Caribbean Marriage Trade. 

Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer and one of the hottest names in publishing. Her debut YA novel, Orangeboy (YEAR), announced her writing with a bang, winning the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children’s Fiction, as well as being shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award. Patrice went on to write Indigo Donut (2017), which was Book of the Week in The Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer. Both books were nominated for the Carnegie Award, Britain’s most important award for writing for children. 

Kate Morrison is a British debut novelist. She studied English Literature at New Hall College, Cambridge and worked as a journalist and a press officer, as well as a visiting scholar with the Book, Text, and Place 1500-1700 Research Centre at Bath Spa University. Kate currently lives in West Sussex with her family.

3.30pm - 4.30pm: Jonathan Edwards - The Poetry of Place

Join poet Jonathan Edwards as he reads from his warm, entertaining second collection, Gen, and discusses the importance of place in his poetry. Firmly rooted in the South Wales Valleys, the poems in the collection reflect on what it means to live in this area in the 21st Century. They offer us a world of closely-knit families and night clubs at chucking-out time, crowded retail parks and couples kissing beneath the neon sign of a pub. The collection is as adept at looking at Wales past as at Wales present, reflecting on significant moments in Welsh history such as the tragedy of Aberfan and the drowning of Tryweryn. The poems celebrate natural environments as well as gritty urban settings and this event will also include a selection of poetry films.

Jonathan Edwards's first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People's Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People's Choice Award. His poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2019, and he has received prizes in the Ledbury Festival International Poetry Competition, the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. He has read his poems on BBC radio and television and at festivals around the world, recorded them for the Poetry Archive and led workshops in schools, universities and prisons. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales.  

5pm - 6pm: Reading and Reflection with all Hearth speakers 

From 6pm: Dinner in Food for Thought (included with Afternoon and Day tickets)

Tickets

Day Tickets (including all Hearth events and meals) are priced at £65.

Afternoon Tickets (including the two afternoon talks plus dinner and entry to the panel discussion) are £40.

Morning Tickets (including the two morning talks plus lunch and entry to the panel discussion) are £40.

Individual event tickets are priced at £15.

All tickets include free entry to the evening panel discussion with all four Hearth speakers during which they will reflect on reading and writing and guests are invited to put forward their most testing questions!

To book please book online, call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].

Please note that tickets for this event are e-tickets. Book online and have your tickets emailed directly to you – then save the environment by bringing along your e-ticket on your phone or tablet and have it scanned as you enter the event. If you would prefer to print your ticket, black and white is fine.

A print and collect service is available to those without access to email facilities for a small charge to cover our admin costs. Call 01244 532350 or email [email protected] for more information. Printed tickets will be available to collect from Reception before the event.

Accommodation is available for this festival but is extremely limited. To book please call 01244 532350.

#Hearthfestival

February 2019

This year, Hearth took place on Saturday, 2nd February in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

10.30am - 11.30am: Jacqueline Saphra - A Bargain With the Light: Poems After Lee Miller

Jacqueline Saphra’s A Bargain with the Light: Poems After Lee Miller was published by Hercules Editions in 2017. In this hour Jacqueline takes a closer look at the life and work of Lee Miller, extraordinary and courageous photographer and trailblazer for women. Jacqueline will offer some background about Miller’s place in twentieth-century history and share her experience of writing poems that explore the intersection of life, art and world events. Followed by a reading of the full sequence with projected images and an open mic session where the audience is invited to perform image-inspired poems (their own or written by others).

Jacqueline Saphra describes herself as a poet, editor, agitator, teacher, organiser and word-enthusiast, writing prose and poems across genres and collaborating with composers, musicians and visual artists. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press 2015) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. In 2017 A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (Hercules Editions 2017) was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award and her latest collection from Nine Arches Press, All My Mad Mothers, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her next collection, Dad, Remember You are Dead will be out from Nine Arches in September 2019. She lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School. www.jacquelinesaphra.com

12pm - 1pm: Ellen Wiles - Hidden Stories of New Arrivals: The Invisible Crowd

It’s 2nd March 1975 and two babies are born: Yonas Kelati in Eritrea, and Jude Munro in Britain. 30 years later, Yonas’s asylum case ends up on Jude’s desk – their lives couldn’t be more different, and yet one hinges on the other. A multi-voice novel, The Invisible Crowd is a compelling exploration of the British asylum system, the lottery of birth and the kindness of strangers. The Chief Executive of the Refugee Council called it ‘a wonderful book’ and it was one of the GuardianReaders’ Books of the Year in 2017. Join Ellen to meet the ragbag of people who encounter Yonas on his journey, and to find out how Jude will argue his case…

Ellen Wiles is a musician-turned-lawyer-turned-writer. As a human rights barrister at a London chambers, Ellen worked on British cases and international projects including with the Bushmen in Botswana, Karenni refugees in Thailand and local lawyers in Myanmar. Her first book, Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar under Censorship and in Transition (2015) features new literary translations and interviews with censored Burmese writers. Her first novel, The Invisible Crowd (2017) won a Victor Turner Prize for ethnographic writing. Ellen is completing a PhD in literary anthropology alongside fiction writing. She has two small children and lives in London.  

1pm - 2pm: Lunch

2pm - 3pm: Tania Hershman - From One Form to Another: A Writing Life So Far

Tania Hershman might be a poet. She might be a short story writer, or an editor, a critic, a blogger, a journalist and a short fiction activist (via her website ShortStops). She has been Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library and at a university biochemistry department, and is currently writer in residence in a cemetery. Her writing is eclectic, funny, thought-provoking and rare. It is inspired by science and by the poems of Louis MacNeice. In this hour Tania will read a specially-chosen selection of her past and current work while talking to Louisa Yates about how her writing life has shaped her, what she’s writing now, what hybrid writing means, and all that she might be next.

Tania Hershman is a writer, teacher and editor. She is the author of six books, as well as many short stories and poems. Her short stories and flash fictions (The White Road; My Mother Was an Upright Piano; Some of Us Glow More Than Others) are noted for their precise tone and wild, complex settings, while her poetry (Nothing Here is Wild, Everything is Open; Terms and Conditions) is similarly intricate and rich. After years spent living and working in Bristol, Tania currently lives in the north of England, where she is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Manchester and writer in residence in the Southern Cemetery.

3.30pm - 4.30pm: Alys Conran - Dignity

Alys Conran is one of Britain’s most exciting new writers. Her first novel, Pigeon, was praised for its humanity and skill: ‘might have been authored by Faulkner’, one critic wrote. Appropriately enough for a festival called Hearth, Alys’s second novel Dignity (forthcoming in 2019) is all about the places we call home. It tells the story of three women: sharp-tonged Magda, her carer Shusheela, and the memories of Magda’s mother Evelyn, a former teacher. Magda spent her childhood in the British Raj, a place that ground down her mother and left a lasting legacy on all three women. Dignity considers what the Raj means to Britain today.

Alys Conran's first novel Pigeon (Parthian Books) won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2017 and was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. It also won the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, The Wales Arts Review People's Choice Award and was longlisted for the Author's Choice First Novel Award. She also publishes poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, creative essays and literary translations and her work is to be found in numerous magazines and anthologies including Stand and The Manchester Review. Her short fiction has been placed in the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. She has read at festivals including The Hay Festival, the Edinburgh Book Festival and on the radio, including Radio Four. Originally from north Wales, she spent several years in Edinburgh and Barcelona before returning to the area to live and write, and speaks Spanish and Catalan as well as Welsh and English. She has worked as a youth worker, teacher, and in community arts and is now Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor.

5pm - 6pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers 

From 6pm: Dinner

#Hearthfestival

Join us for author talks and conversation this winter!

This year, Hearth takes place on Saturday, 2nd February in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

10.30am - 11.30am: Jacqueline Saphra - A Bargain With the Light: Poems After Lee Miller

Jacqueline Saphra’s A Bargain with the Light: Poems After Lee Miller was published by Hercules Editions in 2017. In this hour Jacqueline takes a closer look at the life and work of Lee Miller, extraordinary and courageous photographer and trailblazer for women. Jacqueline will offer some background about Miller’s place in twentieth-century history and share her experience of writing poems that explore the intersection of life, art and world events. Followed by a reading of the full sequence with projected images and an open mic session where the audience is invited to perform image-inspired poems (their own or written by others).

Jacqueline Saphra describes herself as a poet, editor, agitator, teacher, organiser and word-enthusiast, writing prose and poems across genres and collaborating with composers, musicians and visual artists. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011) was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (The Emma Press 2015) won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. In 2017 A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (Hercules Editions 2017) was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award and her latest collection from Nine Arches Press, All My Mad Mothers, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. Her next collection, Dad, Remember You are Dead will be out from Nine Arches in September 2019. She lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School. www.jacquelinesaphra.com

12pm - 1pm: Ellen Wiles - Hidden Stories of New Arrivals: The Invisible Crowd

It’s 2nd March 1975 and two babies are born: Yonas Kelati in Eritrea, and Jude Munro in Britain. 30 years later, Yonas’s asylum case ends up on Jude’s desk – their lives couldn’t be more different, and yet one hinges on the other. A multi-voice novel, The Invisible Crowd is a compelling exploration of the British asylum system, the lottery of birth and the kindness of strangers. The Chief Executive of the Refugee Council called it ‘a wonderful book’ and it was one of the Guardian Readers’ Books of the Year in 2017. Join Ellen to meet the ragbag of people who encounter Yonas on his journey, and to find out how Jude will argue his case…

Ellen Wiles is a musician-turned-lawyer-turned-writer. As a human rights barrister at a London chambers, Ellen worked on British cases and international projects including with the Bushmen in Botswana, Karenni refugees in Thailand and local lawyers in Myanmar. Her first book, Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar under Censorship and in Transition (2015) features new literary translations and interviews with censored Burmese writers. Her first novel, The Invisible Crowd (2017) won a Victor Turner Prize for ethnographic writing. Ellen is completing a PhD in literary anthropology alongside fiction writing. She has two small children and lives in London.  

1pm - 2pm: Lunch

2pm - 3pm: Tania Hershman - From One Form to Another: A Writing Life So Far

Tania Hershman might be a poet. She might be a short story writer, or an editor, a critic, a blogger, a journalist and a short fiction activist (via her website ShortStops). She has been Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library and at a university biochemistry department, and is currently writer in residence in a cemetery. Her writing is eclectic, funny, thought-provoking and rare. It is inspired by science and by the poems of Louis MacNeice. In this hour Tania will read a specially-chosen selection of her past and current work while talking to Louisa Yates about how her writing life has shaped her, what she’s writing now, what hybrid writing means, and all that she might be next.

Tania Hershman is a writer, teacher and editor. She is the author of six books, as well as many short stories and poems. Her short stories and flash fictions (The White Road; My Mother Was an Upright Piano; Some of Us Glow More Than Others) are noted for their precise tone and wild, complex settings, while her poetry (Nothing Here is Wild, Everything is Open; Terms and Conditions) is similarly intricate and rich. After years spent living and working in Bristol, Tania currently lives in the north of England, where she is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Manchester and writer in residence in the Southern Cemetery.

3.30pm - 4.30pm: Alys Conran - Dignity

Alys Conran is one of Britain’s most exciting new writers. Her first novel, Pigeon, was praised for its humanity and skill: ‘might have been authored by Faulkner’, one critic wrote. Appropriately enough for a festival called Hearth, Alys’s second novel Dignity (forthcoming in 2019) is all about the places we call home. It tells the story of three women: sharp-tonged Magda, her carer Shusheela, and the memories of Magda’s mother Evelyn, a former teacher. Magda spent her childhood in the British Raj, a place that ground down her mother and left a lasting legacy on all three women. Dignity considers what the Raj means to Britain today.

Alys Conran's first novel Pigeon (Parthian Books) won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2017 and was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. It also won the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award, The Wales Arts Review People's Choice Award and was longlisted for the Author's Choice First Novel Award. She also publishes poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, creative essays and literary translations and her work is to be found in numerous magazines and anthologies including Stand and The Manchester Review. Her short fiction has been placed in the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. She has read at festivals including The Hay Festival, the Edinburgh Book Festival and on the radio, including Radio Four. Originally from north Wales, she spent several years in Edinburgh and Barcelona before returning to the area to live and write, and speaks Spanish and Catalan as well as Welsh and English. She has worked as a youth worker, teacher, and in community arts and is now Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bangor.

5pm - 6pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers 

From 6pm: Dinner

Tickets

Individual event tickets are priced at £14.

Morning Tickets (including the two morning talks plus lunch and entry to the panel discussion) are £35.

Afternoon Tickets (including the two afternoon talks plus dinner and entry to the panel discussion) are £35.

Day Tickets (including all Hearth events and meals) are £60.

All tickets include free entry to the evening panel discussion with all four Hearth speakers during which they will reflect on reading and writing and guests are invited to put forward their most testing questions!

Online booking for this event is now closed. To book please call 01244 532350.

Please note that tickets for this event are e-tickets. Book online and have your tickets emailed directly to you – then save the environment by bringing along your e-ticket on your phone or tablet and have it scanned as you enter the event. If you would prefer to print your ticket, black and white is fine.

A print and collect service is available to those without access to email facilities for a small charge to cover our admin costs. Call 01244 532350 or email [email protected] for more information. Printed tickets will be available to collect from Reception before the event.

#Hearthfestival

Please note accommodation is available for this festival but is extremely limited. To book please call 01244 532350.

November 2018

Hearth celebrated its fourth birthday in February 2018. We love our micro-festival, and so do you. Over the last four years you’ve given us consistently great feedback: you love the writers, the chat, the food, and the fire. There’s only one drawback - being split over two days means a lot of you have been missing out on the Sunday morning. So we’ve worked to change that. Our new day-long Hearth keeps everything you love, and puts it all on one day...

This autumn, Hearth took place on Saturday, 3rd November 2018 in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

10am - 11am: Angela Topping - Poetry and Mental Health

Mental health has long been intimately linked with poetic expression. Reading and writing poetry can help to articulate struggles and find shared experiences; it can contribute to wellbeing and form part of a strategy of coping. It can be private musing or a public declaration. Angela Topping recently contributed to a new anthology of poetry on the theme of mental health. In this reflective hour she will deliver a reading on mental health and wellbeing. We are delighted to welcome back Angela Topping to Gladstone’s Library. Angela was Writer in Residence for one month in 2013.

Angela Topping is a poet. She performs and reads widely, including in schools, libraries, bookshops and hospices, and her poems appear in a range of journals including Poetry Review. Her eighth collection, 'The Five Petals of Elderflower', was published in 2016. Angela recently contributed three poems to the anthology Please Hear What I’m Not Saying, edited by Isabelle Kenyon (2018).

11.30am - 12.30pm: Robyn Cadwallader - Book of Colours

London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent book, an illuminated manuscript of prayers, a book of hours. Though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their own desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world. Book of Colours is Robyn Cadwallder’s second historical novel and it promises to be every bit as wonderful as her first. Sarah Dunant said in her review of the book, ‘Robyn Cadwallader fashions words with the same delicate, colourful intensity that her 14th Century illuminators brought to their illustrated manuscripts’. Join Robyn for an exclusive reading – the first in the UK! We are delighted to welcome back Robyn Cadwallader to Gladstone’s Library. Robyn was Writer in Residence for a month in 2015.

Robyn Cadwallader is an editor and writer who lives in the countryside near Canberra, Australia. She is the author of the poetry collection 'i painted unafraid' (2009) and a non-fiction book based on her PhD thesis about viriginity and female agency in the Middle Ages. Robyn’s first novel was 2015’s The Anchoress, received with critical and popular acclaim. Her second novel, Book of Colours, was published by HarperCollins in 2018

12.30pm - 1.30pm: Lunch

1.30pm - 2.30pm: Liz Flanagan - From Yorkshire to Arcosi: Travels through Young Adult Writing

Liz Flanagan’s writing is known for its gripping, thrilling tone and powerful friendships. Her first young adult novel, Eden Summer, tells the story of Jess and her friend Eden, and is set in West Yorkshire. The two girls know everything about one another – but when Eden goes missing Jess realises there’s a lot Eden has never shared. Liz’s second novel, the forthcoming Dragon Daughter (October 2018), is a story of adventure, migration and belonging, aimed at children of nine years and upwards. Set on the imaginary island of Arcosi, it is told through the eyes of servant girl Milla, who discovers the last four dragon eggs and is forced to keep them secret amidst growing tensions. In her Hearth event, Liz reads from both her novels, discusses questions of friendship and identity, and talks about the importance of landscape, whether real or imagined. An event for all ages!

Liz Flanagan is a novelist who spent several years running the Ted Hughes Arvon centre, having previously worked as a commissioning editor. The Bookseller highlighted her latest novel, Dragon Daughter, as ‘one to watch’; her first novel, Eden Summer (2016), was called ‘a powerful exploration of the extraordinary power of friendship’. Liz lives in Hebden Bridge, and her novels reflect her love of landscape and lifelong engagement with children’s literature.

3.30pm - 4.30pm: Tara Guha - The Pure Joy of Writing, Wherever You Can

Tara Guha is an expert at writing in the snatches of time that others might think are impossible. Her first novel, 2015’s bestselling Untouchable Things, was written as her daughter napped; this summer her Twitter feed detailed her new novel being written and edited in tents, during swimming breaks, amid swarms of bees and on trains. The adrenaline of the writing process clearly influenced Untouchable Things: it’s a taut, tense thriller praised for its ‘outstanding ensemble cast’. Tara will share her experiences of writing her first book, and share news of her new project.

Tara Guha is a writer whose debut novel Untouchable Things (2015) won the Luke Bitmead bursary, a prize established to help writers and challenge stigma around mental health. After studying English at Cambridge, Tara returned to creative writing following a career in classical music PR. Untouchable Things became an Amazon Kindle bestseller and was praised for its beautiful writing and accomplished, suspenseful narrative. Tara’s current project is also a suspense novel, exploring a cross-cultural friendship against a backdrop of 9/11, tensions between immigrant communities – and an ongoing inquest.

When she’s not writing, Tara enjoys hill walking, singing and playing piano. She once managed all three at once, but that’s another story.

5pm - 6pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers 

From 6pm: Dinner

#Hearthfestival

February 2018

Gladstone’s Library is delighted to announce the line-up for its spring micro-festival, Hearth, which takes place over the weekend of 3rd - 4th February 2018 in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

Saturday, 3rd February 

2.30pm - 3.30pm: Dipika Mukherjee - Challenges and Rewards: Writing the Political Asian Novel

Join Dipika Mukherjee as she discusses her second novel Shambala Junction (2016), a sharp exploration of corruption within international adoptions. Dipika will also consider her debut novel, the contentious Ode to Broken Things (2016), a story set among the political scandals of modern Malaysia.

Dipika Mukherjee is an author and sociolinguist. Her second novel, Shambala Junction, won the UK Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2016. Her debut novel, republished as Ode to Broken Things, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. As well as long-form fiction, Dipika writes short stories and poetry, including the collections Rules of Desire (2015) and The Third Glass of Wine (2015). After periods spent teaching all over the world, Dipika is currently affiliated to the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, where she is finishing an academic manuscript on Migrant Women and the Language of Civic Participation in Malaysia.

4pm - 5pm: Annabel Abbs - History of the Domestic Goddess: Lost Food Writers of the Past

How did ingredients change from the mid sixteenth century to the swinging sixties? Why did Eliza Acton and Mrs Beeton strike such a chord with the nation? Who were the earliest writers of the form? Join novelist and food writer Annabel Abbs as she answers these questions and more, via an exploration of some of her inherited cookery book collection.

Annabel Abbs is a writer of historical-biographical fiction and a food writer (at kaleandcocoa.com). Her debut novel, 2014’s The Joyce Girl, tells the story of Lucia Joyce, daughter of novelist James. It was published to glowing reviews, was a Guardian reader’s pick of 2016, and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award 2017. Annabel came to novel-writing after 15 years in marketing and a bohemian childhood in rural Wales; she now lives in London and Sussex while working on several projects, including the untold story of the original Lady Chatterley.

5.30pm - 6.30pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers 

6.45pm - 7.30pm: Dinner

Sunday, 4th February

10.15am - 11.15am: Sheena Wilkinson - Soldiers, Solidarity and Suffragettes

Sheena Wilkinson’s historical novels Name Upon Name (2015) and Star By Star are set in Ireland during World War One and focus on war, identity and suffrage. In this hour she considers how to create characters who are accessible to a modern reader but not ahistorical; how to write a ‘quiet’ novel which doesn’t take place on the front line; and how to negotiate the complexities of the past.

Sheena Wilkinson is a novelist, short-story writer, and Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast. She is the author of several young adult novels, and has been called ‘one of our foremost writers for young people’ by the Irish Times. Her novels are ostensibly for younger readers, but the questions they ask are relevant to all ages and epochs.

11.45am - 12.45pm: Jenny Lewis - Gilgamesh Retold: Writing Poetry from Research

Jenny Lewis’s new version of the ancient poem the Epic of Gilgamesh speaks to very contemporary geo-political concerns. Jenny’s father served in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in the First World War and in this hour she explains how her investigations into his service, and into Sumerian culture, led to her discovery of the Gilgamesh epic, her subsequent all-consuming interest in it and the way that this research has influenced her writing.

Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, children’s author, songwriter and educator. Now teaching poetry at Oxford University, she originally trained as a painter at the Ruskin School of Art. Her most recent creative projects include ‘Writing Mesopotamia’, a collaboration designed to use poetry to foster greater understanding between English and Arabic-speaking communities. Gilgamesh Retold, Jenny’s re-imagining of the Epic of Gilgamesh will be published by Carcanet in 2018.

12.45pm: Lunch

#Hearthfestival

Join us for author talks and conversation this autumn, in an all-new format!

Hearth celebrated its fourth birthday in February 2018. We love our micro-festival, and so do you. Over the last four years you’ve given us consistently great feedback: you love the writers, the chat, the food, and the fire. There’s only one drawback - being split over two days means a lot of you have been missing out on the Sunday morning. So we’ve worked to change that. Our new day-long Hearth keeps everything you love, and puts it all on one day...

This autumn, Hearth takes place on Saturday, 3rd November 2018 in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

10am - 11am: Angela Topping - Poetry and Mental Health

Mental health has long been intimately linked with poetic expression. Reading and writing poetry can help to articulate struggles and find shared experiences; it can contribute to wellbeing and form part of a strategy of coping. It can be private musing or a public declaration. Angela Topping recently contributed to a new anthology of poetry on the theme of mental health. In this reflective hour she will deliver a reading on mental health and wellbeing. We are delighted to welcome back Angela Topping to Gladstone’s Library. Angela was Writer in Residence for one month in 2013.

Angela Topping is a poet. She performs and reads widely, including in schools, libraries, bookshops and hospices, and her poems appear in a range of journals including Poetry Review. Her eighth collection, 'The Five Petals of Elderflower', was published in 2016. Angela recently contributed three poems to the anthology Please Hear What I’m Not Saying, edited by Isabelle Kenyon (2018).

11.30am - 12.30pm: Robyn Cadwallader - Book of Colours

London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent book, an illuminated manuscript of prayers, a book of hours. Though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their own desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world. Book of Colours is Robyn Cadwallder’s second historical novel and it promises to be every bit as wonderful as her first. Sarah Dunant said in her review of the book, ‘Robyn Cadwallader fashions words with the same delicate, colourful intensity that her 14th Century illuminators brought to their illustrated manuscripts’. Join Robyn for an exclusive reading – the first in the UK! We are delighted to welcome back Robyn Cadwallader to Gladstone’s Library. Robyn was Writer in Residence for a month in 2015.

Robyn Cadwallader is an editor and writer who lives in the countryside near Canberra, Australia. She is the author of the poetry collection 'i painted unafraid' (2009) and a non-fiction book based on her PhD thesis about viriginity and female agency in the Middle Ages. Robyn’s first novel was 2015’s The Anchoress, received with critical and popular acclaim. Her second novel, Book of Colours, was published by HarperCollins in 2018

12.30pm - 1.30pm: Lunch

1.30pm - 2.30pm: Liz Flanagan - From Yorkshire to Arcosi: Travels through Young Adult Writing

Liz Flanagan’s writing is known for its gripping, thrilling tone and powerful friendships. Her first young adult novel, Eden Summer, tells the story of Jess and her friend Eden, and is set in West Yorkshire. The two girls know everything about one another – but when Eden goes missing Jess realises there’s a lot Eden has never shared. Liz’s second novel, the forthcoming Dragon Daughter (October 2018), is a story of adventure, migration and belonging, aimed at children of nine years and upwards. Set on the imaginary island of Arcosi, it is told through the eyes of servant girl Milla, who discovers the last four dragon eggs and is forced to keep them secret amidst growing tensions. In her Hearth event, Liz reads from both her novels, discusses questions of friendship and identity, and talks about the importance of landscape, whether real or imagined. An event for all ages!

Liz Flanagan is a novelist who spent several years running the Ted Hughes Arvon centre, having previously worked as a commissioning editor. The Bookseller highlighted her latest novel, Dragon Daughter, as ‘one to watch’; her first novel, Eden Summer (2016), was called ‘a powerful exploration of the extraordinary power of friendship’. Liz lives in Hebden Bridge, and her novels reflect her love of landscape and lifelong engagement with children’s literature.

3.30pm - 4.30pm: Tara Guha - The Pure Joy of Writing, Wherever You Can

Tara Guha is an expert at writing in the snatches of time that others might think are impossible. Her first novel, 2015’s bestselling Untouchable Things, was written as her daughter napped; this summer her Twitter feed detailed her new novel being written and edited in tents, during swimming breaks, amid swarms of bees and on trains. The adrenaline of the writing process clearly influenced Untouchable Things: it’s a taut, tense thriller praised for its ‘outstanding ensemble cast’. Tara will share her experiences of writing her first book, and share news of her new project.

Tara Guha is a writer whose debut novel Untouchable Things (2015) won the Luke Bitmead bursary, a prize established to help writers and challenge stigma around mental health. After studying English at Cambridge, Tara returned to creative writing following a career in classical music PR. Untouchable Things became an Amazon Kindle bestseller and was praised for its beautiful writing and accomplished, suspenseful narrative. Tara’s current project is also a suspense novel, exploring a cross-cultural friendship against a backdrop of 9/11, tensions between immigrant communities – and an ongoing inquest.

When she’s not writing, Tara enjoys hill walking, singing and playing piano. She once managed all three at once, but that’s another story.

5pm - 6pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers 

From 6pm: Dinner

Tickets

Individual event tickets are priced at £14.

Morning Tickets (including the two morning talks plus Lunch and entry to the panel discussion) are £35.

Afternoon Tickets (including the two afternoon talks plus Dinner and entry to the panel discussion) are £35.

Day Tickets (including all Hearth events and meals) are £60.

All tickets include free entry to the evening panel discussion with all four Hearth speakers during which they will reflect on reading and writing and guests are invited to put forward their most testing questions!

Online booking for this event is now closed. To book please contact Reception on 01244 532350.

Please note that tickets for this event are e-tickets. Book online and have your tickets emailed directly to you – then save the environment by bringing along your e-ticket on your phone or tablet and have it scanned as you enter the event. If you would prefer to print your ticket, black and white is fine.

A print and collect service is available to those without access to email facilities for a small charge to cover our admin costs. Call 01244 532350 or email [email protected] for more information. Printed tickets will be available to collect from Reception before the event.

#Hearthfestival

Visiting us for Hearth and fancy getting a little more hands-on? Natasha Pulley runs a creative writing workshop on Sunday, 4th November 10am – 12pm. Tickets are priced at £22.50 and include lunch. Click here for more information and to book.

Join us for author talks and conversation this February!

Gladstone’s Library is delighted to announce the line-up for its spring micro-festival, Hearth, which takes place over the weekend of 3rd - 4th February 2018 in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

Saturday, 3rd February 

2.30pm - 3.30pm: Dipika Mukherjee - Challenges and Rewards: Writing the Political Asian Novel

Join Dipika Mukherjee as she discusses her second novel Shambala Junction (2016), a sharp exploration of corruption within international adoptions. Dipika will also consider her debut novel, the contentious Ode to Broken Things (2016), a story set among the political scandals of modern Malaysia.

Dipika Mukherjee is an author and sociolinguist. Her second novel, Shambala Junction, won the UK Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2016. Her debut novel, republished as Ode to Broken Things, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. As well as long-form fiction, Dipika writes short stories and poetry, including the collections Rules of Desire (2015) and The Third Glass of Wine (2015). After periods spent teaching all over the world, Dipika is currently affiliated to the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, where she is finishing an academic manuscript on Migrant Women and the Language of Civic Participation in Malaysia.

4pm - 5pm: Annabel Abbs - History of the Domestic Goddess: Lost Food Writers of the Past

How did ingredients change from the mid sixteenth century to the swinging sixties? Why did Eliza Acton and Mrs Beeton strike such a chord with the nation? Who were the earliest writers of the form? Join novelist and food writer Annabel Abbs as she answers these questions and more, via an exploration of some of her inherited cookery book collection.

Annabel Abbs is a writer of historical-biographical fiction and a food writer (at kaleandcocoa.com). Her debut novel, 2014’s The Joyce Girl, tells the story of Lucia Joyce, daughter of novelist James. It was published to glowing reviews, was a Guardian reader’s pick of 2016, and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award 2017. Annabel came to novel-writing after 15 years in marketing and a bohemian childhood in rural Wales; she now lives in London and Sussex while working on several projects, including the untold story of the original Lady Chatterley.

5.30pm - 6.30pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers 

6.45pm - 7.30pm: Dinner

Sunday, 4th February

10.15am - 11.15am: Sheena Wilkinson - Soldiers, Solidarity and Suffragettes

Sheena Wilkinson’s historical novels Name Upon Name (2015) and Star By Star are set in Ireland during World War One and focus on war, identity and suffrage. In this hour she considers how to create characters who are accessible to a modern reader but not ahistorical; how to write a ‘quiet’ novel which doesn’t take place on the front line; and how to negotiate the complexities of the past.

Sheena Wilkinson is a novelist, short-story writer, and Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast. She is the author of several young adult novels, and has been called ‘one of our foremost writers for young people’ by the Irish Times. Her novels are ostensibly for younger readers, but the questions they ask are relevant to all ages and epochs.

11.45am - 12.45pm: Jenny Lewis - Gilgamesh Retold: Writing Poetry from Research

Jenny Lewis’s new version of the ancient poem the Epic of Gilgamesh speaks to very contemporary geo-political concerns. Jenny’s father served in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in the First World War and in this hour she explains how her investigations into his service, and into Sumerian culture, led to her discovery of the Gilgamesh epic, her subsequent all-consuming interest in it and the way that this research has influenced her writing.

Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, children’s author, songwriter and educator. Now teaching poetry at Oxford University, she originally trained as a painter at the Ruskin School of Art. Her most recent creative projects include ‘Writing Mesopotamia’, a collaboration designed to use poetry to foster greater understanding between English and Arabic-speaking communities. Gilgamesh Retold, Jenny’s re-imagining of the Epic of Gilgamesh will be published by Carcanet in 2018.

12.45pm: Lunch

Tickets

Tickets are onsale now! To book please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].

Individual event tickets are priced at £14.

Day tickets are priced at £35 which includes dinner on Saturday or lunch on Sunday.

Weekend tickets are priced at £60 including dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.

All tickets include free entry to the panel discussion on Saturday evening with all four Hearth speakers during which they will reflect on reading and writing and guests are invited to put forward their most testing questions!

Join us for author talks and conversation this November!

Gladstone’s Library is delighted to announce the line-up for its autumn micro-festival, Hearth, which takes place over the weekend of 4th – 5th November in the cosy common room of our residential library. This intimate literary festival offers keen writers the opportunity to pick up hints and tips, and ask questions of published authors about their experiences. It also encourages anyone interested in the world of books to find out more about the writing and publishing process.

Saturday, 4th November 

2.30pm - 3.30pm: Krishan Coupland - Hyperfiction: Make a Part of History

Krishan Coupland uses technology to create non-linear narratives, weaving together digital media with physical. This practice is known as hyperfiction and Krishan’s talk explores the various forms of this genre, as well as its future possibilities. Krishan will also create a lasting interactive hypertext piece based in Gladstone’s Library. Make a part of history...

Krishan Coupland is a writer, editor and digital nomad. His debut collection of (very) short fiction, When You Lived Inside the Walls, was published by Stonewood Press in 2017. Other poems and stories have been published in Ambit, Aesthetica, Litro and elsewhere. In his spare time Krishan runs and edits Neon Literary Magazine. He is currently working on two more projects: a young adult novel, about a boy who can turn himself inside out; and a game about what it is to be poor.

4pm - 5pm: Will Harris - Mixed Perspectives

Will Harris has been called a poet who ‘distrusts fixed perspectives’. His debut chapbook, All This is Implied, mulls over societies where difference and complexity is the norm. Now writing a prose book on mixed identities, Will has said that much of his writing comes as a response to those who distrust, rather than welcome, difference. Join Will as he reads from his writing past and present.

Will Harris was born in London, of mixed Anglo-Indonesian heritage. He has worked in schools and as a tutor, co-edits the small press 13 Pages and is one of the organisers of The Poetry Inquisition. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, The White Review and The Rialto, where he is Assistant Editor. He is also part of the editorial team behind Swimmers and helped put together the first-ever Poetry Magazine Fair. He is a fellow of the Complete Works III, and will be published as part of the Bloodaxe anthology Ten: Poets of the New Generation. His debut pamphlet,
All This is implied, was published by HappenStance Press in June 2017. He blogs about literature, race and politics at willjharris.com.

5.30pm - 6.30pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers  

6.45pm - 7.30pm: Dinner

Sunday, 5th November

10.15am - 11.15am: Sam Guglani - Medicine, Science and the Arts

What are the human and moral challenges of contemporary medicine? Why are the arts an urgent and necessary means of knowledge towards better medicine – and ultimately, better society? Join poet, novelist and consultant oncologist Sam Guglani for an hour’s reflection, including the Medicine Unboxed project and readings from his work.

Sam Guglani is a poet, novelist and consultant oncologist who specialises in the management of lung and brain tumours. He has a background in medical ethics and chairs the Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust law and ethics group. Director of Medicine Unboxed since he founded it in 2009, Sam uses the arts and creative industries to illuminate challenges in medicine. He is a published poet and writes for The Lancet, and his debut novel Histories is released in 2017.

11.45am - 12.45pm: Joan Michelson - Bloomvale Home

A poetry reading and discussion of Bloomvale Home, Joan’s 2016 chapbook focussing on the care and treatment of residents in a Home for Assisted Living. Plain-spoken and unflinchingly compassionate, Joan’s poetry deals with the practicalities, mundane details and inevitable fate of the residents of Bloomvale Home.

Joan Michelson is a poet, lecturer, and arts facilitator who teaches poetry at all levels of education. She was poet laureate of Crouch End from 2011-14, and for many years was Head of Creative Writing and Holocaust Studies at the University of Wolverhampton.

12.45pm: Lunch

Tickets

Tickets are onsale now! To book please book online, call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].

Individual event tickets are priced at £14.

Day tickets are priced at £35 which includes dinner on Saturday or lunch on Sunday.

Weekend tickets are priced at £60 including dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.

All tickets include free entry to the panel discussion on Saturday evening with all four Hearth speakers during which they will reflect on reading and writing and guests are invited to put forward their most testing questions!

Pull up a chair, gather around the hearth and indulge in a weekend of stimulating and entertaining conversation at our two-day micro-festival.

Improve your writing, find out how to publish your novel, acquire hints and tips and find inspiration during our autumn micro-festival, Hearth. The newest addition to the Gladstone's Library Calendar and the younger sibling of our Gladfest summer literature festival, Hearth began in 2013 and is held in November and February every year. Hearth is an opportunity to meet, talk and create with four authors over a weekend of writing-related activity.

This winter, Hearth takes place 6th - 7th February. 

Prepare to be stimulated, enthralled and informed by:

Saturday, 6th February 

3.15pm - 4.15pm: Gulwali Passarlay & David Loyn - The Lightless Sky - SOLD OUT

At only twelve years old, Gulwali Passarlay fled the violence of the Afghan war. It would take him a year to reach Britain; he was shot at, imprisoned and almost drowned in the Mediterranean. Now, Gulwali shares his tale. 

Gulwali will be interviewed by former BBC journalist and the author of Butcher and Bolt – Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan, David Loyn.

4.30pm - 5.30pm: Rebecca Farmer - Readings from Not Really

Rebecca Farmer is a startling new poetry talent. Her pamphlet Not Really was awarded the 2015 Poetry Business Pamphlet Prize by Carol Ann Duffy. Discover Rebecca’s poetry in a gentle hour of illustrated readings by the Hearth fire. Not to be missed.

8pm - 9pm: Reading and Reflection with all four Hearth speakers  

Sunday, 7th February 

10.15am - 11.15am: Natasha Pulley - Meiji Japan and Victorian Britain

What links Victorian Britain with Meiji Japan? More than you might think, says Natasha Pulley, author of the acclaimed The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Natasha is keeping it all to herself – you’ll have to join her to find out! 

11.45am - 12.45pm: Dan Richards - The Beechwood Airship: Writing, Not Writing, and Art

Someone who builds an enormous wooden airship, hangs it in the centre of the students’ union for a couple of years, then drags it outside and sets it on fire is bound to have something to say about Art. In this interactive talk, Dan explores the creative process and the importance of art for art’s sake, a topic he explored in The Beechwood Airship Interviews, where he spoke with Judi Dench, Robert Macfarlane, Manic Street Preachers, and others.

Tickets

Tickets are priced at £32.50 for one day which includes lunch or dinner on your chosen day and entry to Saturday evening's panel discussion.

You can purchase weekend tickets for £55 which includes all Hearth events and meals.

Alternatively, tickets per event are priced at £12 each (includes free entry to the panel discussion).

To book your tickets, please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].

Why not make a weekend of it? Please ring or email to check availability on our accommodation.

Our first ever 'mini' festival will be held on Saturday, February 1 and Sunday, February 2. 

This first Hearth festival, and its ‘sibling’ in mid-winter, are designed as informal gatherings around the fire; they’re a chance to experience writers and writing, conversation, food and drink at our very own literary salon.

Hearth gathers an exceptional range of speakers to its inaugural unveiling.

Meet your February 2014 writers:

Adnan Mahmutovic

Formerly a Bosnian war refugee, Adnan is now a lecturer and Writer in Residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. His fiction explores contemporary European history and the issues of identity and home for Bosnian refugees. His work includes: short fi ction, How to Fare Well and Stay Fair; novel length fiction, Thinner than a Hair; academic writing, Ways of Being Free and film, Guzul.

Melissa Harrison

Melissa is a writer, photographer and winner of the 2010 John Muir Trust’s ‘Wild Writing’ Award. Her debut novel, Clay, has been chosen for Amazon’s ‘Rising Stars’ programme and is shortlisted for the Portsmouth First Fiction award. The novel explores the balance of life within a city and deconstructs binary opposites such as young and old, nature and development and recklessness and caution.

Neil Griffiths

Neil is the author of two novels. His debut novel, Betrayal in Naples, explores the consequential nature of life and was the winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel, and
his second, Saving Caravaggio, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year.

Tania Hershman 

Tania is the author of two short story collections. Her first, The White Road and Other Stories, was commended by judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers. Tania’s second collection, My Mother was an Upright Piano: Fictions. She is often broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and her work is commonly inspired by science. Tania was recently Writer in Residence at the Science Faculty of Bristol University from 2009-2012.

Tickets for each day are £25 (£45 for both days) and include a two course dinner/lunch, and a question and answer event with that day’s speakers.

Also included in the ticket price is the opportunity to relax with a glass of wine in the tranquillity of the Gladstone Room, in front of the fire with all of the writers and participants.

Pull up a chair, gather around the hearth and indulge in a weekend of stimulating and entertaining conversation.

Improve your writing, find out how to publish your novel, acquire hints and tips and find inspiration during our autumn micro-festival, Hearth. The newest addition to the Gladstone's Library Calendar and the younger sibling of our Gladfest summer literature festival, Hearth began in 2013 and is held in November and February every year. Hearth is an opportunity to meet, talk and create with four authors over a weekend of writing-related activity.

This autumn, Hearth takes place 31 October - 1 November and will focus on Welsh writing, although all talks will be in English. Prepare to be stimulated, enthralled and informed by:

Saturday 31 October

3.15pm: Kate Hamer - The Novel Journey

The Cardiff-based author takes us through the experience of writing her debut novel, The Girl in the Red Coat, published February 2015. From keeping faith in the world she created to gauging the right time to submit to literary agents.

4.30pm: Gee Williams - Perfidy, Poetry and Foul-play (or Why Poets take to Crime)

Four months on from the release of Desire Line, a literary thriller which was the WHSmith and Waterstones Book of the Month, poet and fictioneer Gee Williams traces the tradition of the thriller from her own work in the modern day back to that of Thomas Hardy.

8pm: Reading and Reflection with all Four Hearth Writers

Sunday 1 November

10.30am: Abbie Ross - Childhood Memoir Writing: Wales Through the Eyes of a Child

Abbie Ross chats about the childhood in rural North Wales that inspired her bestselling memoir Hippy Dinners: woolly tights and brown food, pudding basin haircuts and picking mushrooms in the field. Now a firm city-dweller, Abbie reflects on what the Welsh countryside taught her.

1.30pm: Cynan Jones - How to Avoid Being a Writer and What to do if you Can't

Cynan Jones gives a tongue-in-cheek talk about his chosen career path and the publication of his four short novels, the most recent of which, The Dig, won Wales Book of the Year 2015. A chance to put your most probing questions to a captive writer!

This year, Hearth is part of the Museums at Night initiative.

Tickets are priced at £32.50 for one day which includes lunch or dinner on your chosen day and entry to Saturday evening's panel discussion.

You can purchase weekend tickets for £55 which includes all Hearth events and meals.

Alternatively, tickets per event are priced at £12 each (includes free entry to the panel discussion).

To book your tickets, please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].

Sponsored by Lloyds Animal Feeds

Gladstone's Library will again be holding its winter micro-festival Hearth on Saturday, November 1^st and Sunday, November 2^nd.

Hearth is an opportunity to meet, talk and create with four authors over a weekend of writing related activity.

Meet your November 2014 Hearth writers: 

Lucy Gough

Lucy Gough is based in Aberystwyth and has written extensively for TV, radio and stage. She wrote for Hollyoaks Channel 4 for ten years and currently writes for BBC drama, Doctors. In 2013 she was short-listed for the new BBC Wales Drama Award and in 2014 she was short-listed for the Nick Dark award. She is a Creative Research Fellow at Aberystwyth University and has just been awarded a Creative Wales Award by the Welsh Arts Council. Her collected plays have been published by Methuen and Seren while Nick Hern has published her stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Currently she is under commission with the National Theatre of Wales to write a play about the artist and writer, Brenda Chamberlain. She is also working on an adaptation of Adventures in The Skin Trade to be part of the Dylan Thomas centenary celebrations touring in October 2014.

James Runcie

James Runcie is an author, film maker, theatre director and Head of Literature and the Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre in London. His work is known for its thoughtful but humorous engagement with complex cultural questions: life, death, family. As his documentary on J. K. Rowling revealed, James does not shy away from engaging with the mechanics of creativity. As well as his role as Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, James is currently working on the fourth Grantchester Mystery, Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins. James comes to Hearth just as ITV broadcast their adaptation of his first Grantchester Mystery, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death. Be sure to tune in!

Rebecca Abrams

Rebecca is a Gladstone’s Library’s Writer-in-Residence for 2014. She was awarded her residency for her first fiction publication, Touching Distance. This historical novel is set in the 1790s and follows Scottish physician Dr Alec Gordon as he seeks to find a cure for the ‘childbed’ fever which is killing scores of otherwise healthy women in the days after they have given birth. Hilary Mantel called Touching Distance a ‘fascinating novel with sound research put to telling use’. When not writing fiction, Rebecca is an award-winning journalist.

Patricia Bracewell

Patricia is a Los Angeles-born author who, as she describes it, spent her childhood devouring novels about ‘England’s wet, green dales’. After a career spent teaching English Literature in Californian high schools, Patricia put those early reading experiences to good use: she now writes historical fiction set in eleventh-century England. Her first novel, Shadow on the Crown, is the first in a trilogy following Emma of Normandy, whose role as Queen Consort of England and mother of Edward the Confessor was key to the events of 1066. The sequel, The Price of Blood, is set for release in early 2015.

Tickets for each day are £27.50 (£50 for both days) and includes a two-course dinner/lunch, and a question and answer event with all four authors.

There's also an additional talk by Lucy Gough called The Pleasures and Challenges of Adaptation and of Writing for Radio.

Tickets for Lucy's talk on Saturday afternoon before the main Hearth events are £10 and include tea and coffee.

You can hear our November 2014 talks on our Sound Cloud page. 

November 2014 slideshow:

Hearth November 2014 was also the topic of a number of wonderful reviews:

The Literary Feast at Gladstone’s Library by Patricia Bracewell. 

Review: Hearth Festival at Gladstone's Library by Heloise Wood. 

‘Hearth’ – a literary weekend in Wales by Maggie Cobbett.

My expectations... were surpassed by the reality by Cathy Grimmer.

Pull up a chair, gather around the hearth and indulge in a weekend of stimulating and entertaining conversation.

Improve your writing, find out how to publish your novel, acquire hints and tips and find inspiration during our autumn micro-festival, Hearth. The newest addition to the Gladstone's Library Calendar and the younger sibling of our Gladfest summer literature festival, Hearth began in 2013 and is held in November and February every year. Hearth is an opportunity to meet, talk and create with four authors over a weekend of writing-related activity.

This autumn, Hearth takes place 31 October - 1 November and will focus on Welsh writing, although all talks will be in English. Prepare to be stimulated, enthralled and informed by:

Saturday 31 October

3.15pm: Kate Hamer - The Novel Journey

The Cardiff-based author takes us through the experience of writing her debut novel, The Girl in the Red Coat, published February 2015. From keeping faith in the world she created to gauging the right time to submit to literary agents.

4.30pm: Gee Williams - Perfidy, Poetry and Foul-play (or Why Poets take to Crime)

Four months on from the release of Desire Line, a literary thriller which was the WHSmith and Waterstones Book of the Month, poet and fictioneer Gee Williams traces the tradition of the thriller from her own work in the modern day back to that of Thomas Hardy.

8pm: Reading and Reflection with all Four Hearth Writers

Sunday 1 November

10.30am: Abbie Ross - Childhood Memoir Writing: Wales Through the Eyes of a Child

Abbie Ross chats about the childhood in rural North Wales that inspired her bestselling memoir Hippy Dinners: woolly tights and brown food, pudding basin haircuts and picking mushrooms in the field. Now a firm city-dweller, Abbie reflects on what the Welsh countryside taught her.

1.30pm: Cynan Jones - How to Avoid Being a Writer and What to do if you Can't

Cynan Jones gives a tongue-in-cheek talk about his chosen career path and the publication of his four short novels, the most recent of which, The Dig, won Wales Book of the Year 2015. A chance to put your most probing questions to a captive writer!

This year, Hearth is part of the Museums at Night initiative.

Tickets are priced at £32.50 for one day which includes lunch or dinner on your chosen day and entry to Saturday evening's panel discussion.

You can purchase weekend tickets for £55 which includes all Hearth events and meals.

Alternatively, tickets per event are priced at £12 each (includes free entry to the panel discussion).

To book your tickets, please call 01244 532350 or email [email protected].

Sponsored by Lloyds Animal Feeds

Gather around the warming fire to listen to readings, attend workshops and discuss books and ideas.

Hearth is a unique chance to spend a weekend up close and personal with award-winning writers.

Improve your writing, find out how to publish your novel, get hints and tips and find inspiration.

Be prepared to be enthralled and informed.

Our festival in February will begin on Friday February 6, with the New Welsh Writing Awards Shortlisting Event, held by the New Welsh Review (NWR). 

NWR'S Gwen Davies will unveil the shortlist of the New Welsh Writing Awards from 7.30pm. 

From the cosy confines of the Gladstones Room, Gwen will be joined by a mystery author from the shortlist whom she will be interviewing.

The editor of New Welsh Review will also be speaking about the innovative new awards programme, for non-fiction writing on nature and the environment. The overall winner of the competition, which will be announced on February 25, will receive £1,000 as well as stay here at Gladstone's Library. 

Tickets for the shortlisting event cost £5. 

Meet our 2015 guests....

Sarah Butler - How Far Can You Go? (Saturday Feb 7, 3.15pm-4.15pm)

What are the issues involved in creating characters who are 'far away' from the writer's own identity and experience?

Sarah will read from her novels, Ten Things I've Learnt About Love, written (partly) in the voice of a homeless man in his late 50s, and Before The Fire, which takes the perspective of a 17 year old boy from north Manchester, and talk about the process and ethics of creating these characters.

She will invite questions and discussion throughout.

Listen to Sarah's How Far Can You Go? talk here. 

Katrina Naomi - Hooligans (Saturday Feb 7, 4.30pm - 5.30pm)

Join Katrina on her journey writing her book of poetry entitled Hooligans (due to be published in January 2015).

Katrina carried out her research for Hooligans, which was inspired by the Suffragettes, right here at Gladstone's Library when she looked into the life of her great-nan.

Follow her journey from the original research, to her difficulties of writing from a real person in history and the ethics of staying true to life.

Katrina will share her first drafts, talk about editing and look at the books she used for research...and of course you will get a sneak peak at some of the final poems.

Listen to Katrina's Hooligans talk here.

Suzette Hill - Writing Novels: A Complex Masochism! (Sunday Feb 8, 10.30am - 11.30am)

Listen to the tale of Suzette's transformation from lecturer to author.

From taking a leap of faith and self-publishing her first novel A Load of Old Bones (which first saw daylight here in Gladstone's Library).

Suzette has gone on to write six more published novels and has an eighth due out next year.

She has twice been shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books' Last Laugh Award.

Suzette will talk about her most recent novels, including The Venetian Venture described by The Guardian as 'charming, astringent and witty'. 

Listen to Suzette's Writing Novels: A Complex Masochism talk here. 

Jessie Burton - Patchwork Pages Exploring The Process From Manuscript To Finished Book (Sunday Feb 8, 1.30pm - 2.30pm)

What happens when you think you have a manuscript ready to send into the world?

Jessie talks about when and how you should approach a literary agent, and what advice you should take or reject along the way.

Jessie Burton's debut novel, The Miniaturist, was published in July 2014 and spent over two months in The Sunday Times Top Ten.

'Gripping and gorgeous' The Telegraph.

Listen to Jessie's talk: Patchwork Pages Exploring The Process From Manuscript To Finished Book here

Join all our Hearth writers for Reading and Reflection on Saturday, February 7 from 8pm-9pm. 

Tickets for Hearth are priced at £32.50 for one day (includes Friday night's event, lunch or dinner on your chosen day and Saturday evenings Reading and Reflection event) or £55 for the whole weekend (includes Friday night's event, lunch or dinner on your chosen day and Saturday night's panel discussion).

Alternatively tickets per event are priced at £12 (includes free entry to the panel discussion) and £5 for Friday evening's shortlisting event. 

To book call 01244 532350 or email us. 

View our slideshow from Hearth November 2014