An audience with Marian Keyes. Hosted by Damian Barr's Literary Salon

#RACHELSBACK! Celebrate the return of Rachel with Marian Keyes and Special Guests at Damian Barr’s Literary Salon on Wednesday 16th February! Tickets are available here.

The phenomenal, multi-million-copy, internationally bestselling author Marian Keyes returns for an exclusive digital Literary Salon to reveal one of the most anticipated books of 2022: ‘Again, Rachel’.

This long-awaited sequel is Marian’s fifteenth novel. Her books have rightly become beloved world-wide for their heartwarming combination of wit, love and fearless honesty depicted through down-to-earth characters we feel we know. 'Rachel’s Holiday', in which Rachel Walsh debuted 25 years ago, is regarded by many fans as their favourite. Since then, readers have been dying to know just what happened to Rachel, and some fella named Luke Costello…

As well as her new novel, Marian will be chatting about her own writing journey and craft, where she draws her inspiration from, and how she brings humour to some of today’s most important contemporary issues.

Damian Barr will be your host for this very special Salon conjuring a fabliss evening for you all! Expect Very Special Guests and plenty of fun and games. The brilliant broadcaster, journalist and Marian-superfan, Alex Clark will be interviewing Marian. Alex, often heard on BBC R4’s such Front Row and Open Book, was a judge for the (then) Man Booker Prize - expect a gripping and gorgeous conversation! And you’ll have the chance to get your questions answered by Marian!

The Salon runs online from 7-8.30pm. We have various ticket options including an extra special book-and-ticket bundle, which gives you the chance to get your hands on a copy before the Salon and before it even hits the shelves! This is one FABLISS evening for every true fan whoever and wherever you are.

If you can’t join us live on the night, don’t fret, as you'll also be able to watch the Salon back whenever you want afterwards. It’ll be just as much fun! We really look forward to you joining us.

For every ‘book and ticket’ package sold we will offer a free online ticket so that someone who would not otherwise be able to enjoy the event get’s to join in. And, as with all online salons, this evening will be streamed free to any library that wants to take part - just email libraries@literary-salon.co.uk for details.

Click HERE for tickets!

Damian Barr's Literary Salon presents Kate Mosse in conversation with Sam Baker

Join us online as we celebrate the launch of Kate Mosse’s touching memoir An Extra Pair of Hands.

This heart-warming book shines a light on the joys and challenges of being a carer and shows how even the smallest act of caregiving is one of the greatest acts of love. Kate will be interviewed by journalist, broadcaster and editor Sam Baker.

An Extra Pair of Hands sees Kate shift focus from historical fiction to personal history. Here she tells her own story - of finding herself as a carer in middle age: first, helping her heroic mother care for her beloved father through Parkinson's, then supporting her mother in widowhood, and finally as ‘an extra pair of hands’ for her 90-year-old mother-in-law. If you follow Kate on Twitter, you’ll already know beloved Granny Rosie, who has become a social media sensation in her own right!

David Rockwell in conversation with Damian Barr

Join us next week for a special evening with acclaimed architect and designer David Rockwell. From designing the Oscars stage to beautiful theatres, from creating cultural buildings to sets for iconic productions Hairspray and The Normal Heart, David’s work is ALL about stories and drama, and we can’t wait to explore it with him in celebration of his new book Drama.

Join David and Damian online from 8pm-9pm (UK time) on Thursday 22nd April. NO NEED TO BUY A TICKET - THIS SPECIAL SALON IS OPEN TO ALL!

Damian Barr's Literary Salon welcomes new Guest Hosts!

BIG NEWS! Please welcome our new Guest Hosts!

We’re introducing a gorgeous line-up of brilliant Guest Hosts so we can put on more Salons and make the conversation around books even bigger, even more inclusive and even more joyful!

I’m delighted to announce that Anthony Anaxagorou, Sam Baker, Alex Clark, Sara Collins, Natalie Haynes, Alexandra Heminsley, Paul McVeigh, Sarah Perry and Sathnam Sanghera are all joining Salon! They’re all very different but equally brilliant and will be hosting Salons online and in-person (when we can). They each bring their own unique story and I can’t wait to hear them.

Guest User24 March 2021Paris Less, Damian Barr, Salon LIVE Online, Kate Mosse

Salon On Demand

Thank you to everybody who came to the Salon LIVE Online with Russell T Davies and Ruth Coker Burks - hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kind clever people from all around the world. I don’t know where to start with the heroic Ruth or the genius Russell: they were both incredible. What they responded to was all that love and open-ness.

You can still watch the Salon by getting a Salon On Demand ticket HERE and 10% will go to Terrence Higgins Trust. We have so far raised over £750.

GET TICKETS.

Salon LIVE Online: Russell T Davies & Ruth Coker Burks with Damian Barr

Get ready for the first Salon of 2021!

Join us online for a powerful evening of stories of fear and hope, loss and survival, becoming and belonging. In the 1980s, HIV-AIDS devastated the LGBTQ+ community - the epidemic is not over. Join Ruth Coker Burks and Russell T Davies as they look back on that time, uncover untold stories and reflect on their relevance now. Ruth is the author of All The Young Men, her memoir of how, as a young, single mother in Arkansas, she found herself at the forefront of the AIDS crisis, risking everything to restore humanity to those the virus and prejudice sought to destroy. Russell revolutionised TV with Queer As Folk - It’s A Sin is another landmark series: the first British show to directly show HIV-AIDS impacting a whole generation of gay and bisexual men and how they respond and resist. It’s as joyful and defiant as it is heart-breaking. February is LGBTQ+ History Month and all are welcome at this online Salon – 10% of ticket revenue from this event goes to support the work of the Terrence Higgins Trust.

Click HERE For full details and to buy tickets.

Salon LIVE Online: Dolly Alderton with Damian Barr

Friday 23rd October 8-9pm (UK time)

Dolly Alderton goes deep on love, laughter and loss in her debut novel Ghosts.

Dolly Alderton really is our Nora Ephron – her observations, in her writing or on the High Low podcast, go right to the heart of whatever she’s trained her generous attention on. She makes us laugh and she makes us think and she reveals the profundity of seemingly everyday dramas. Her first novel, Ghosts, follows the runaway success of her memoir Everything I Know About Love.

Guest User10 September 2020Damian Barr, Dolly Alderton, Salon LIVE Online, Ghosts, Debut novel, YouTube

Salon LIVE Online: SJ Watson with Damian Barr

Thriller time! And another world premiere! Damian Barr interviews SJ Watson, author of Before I Go To Sleep, about his dark new novel Final Cut.

This jumpy new thriller is all about time and memory - how and what we remember and how and what we try to forget. Flitting between Now and Then, the story follows an ambitious young documentary filmmaker who’s struggling to live up to the promise of her first hit. She gets the idea of making a film about life in a small, northern village and finds herself mysteriously drawn to a town called Blackwood Bay. Once gilded and busy it’s now run-down and ghostly and behind the faded facades there are more secrets than our filmmaker could ever have hoped to find… Nothing exciting ever happens in Blackwood Bay – or does it?

We’re delighted that SJ Watson is returning to the Salon for another world premiere, as he continues pushing the boundaries of the genre he’s celebrated for reinvigorating. Here he returns to his favourite themes: memory and identity.

Join SJ Watson and Damian Barr for a thrilling conversation online, Friday 7th August from 8 to 9pm (UK time).

This event will happen via online video platform but only SJ & Damian will be visible and audible and the audience will remain entirely anonymous (so you can wear what you like!).

Tickets are £5 and every ticket bought enters you for the chance to win a copy of Final Cut. Damian will announce the winner at the end of the event.

We look forward to you joining us.

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Salon LIVE Online: Douglas Stuart with Damian Barr, June 26th

Salon LIVE Online: Douglas Stuart with Damian Barr

Join Douglas Stuart and Damian Barr for a trip to 1980s Glasgow and the world of Shuggie Bain.

Shuggie Bain is a little boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow. And his world is Agnes Bain, his glamorous, calamitous mother, drinking herself ever so slowly to death. Shuggie tries to save her and finds himself in a city that’s both bleak and dazzling. This novel will break your heart only to mend it again bigger and stronger and more generous. It’s the world I grew up in and wrote about in Maggie & Me but here it’s brought to life in fiction, albeit partly autobiographical. The New York Times Book Review said: "The book would be just about unbearable were it not for the author’s astonishing capacity for love. He’s lovely, Douglas Stuart, fierce and loving and lovely. He shows us lots of monstrous behaviour, but not a single monster―only damage. If he has a sharp eye for brokenness, he is even keener on the inextinguishable flicker of love that remains.” Douglas, born and brought up in Glasgow, now lives in New York. He was chosen as one of the Observer's 'best debut novelists' earlier this year and had his first story published in the New Yorker in January. 'Found Wanting' is about growing up queer before the internet and it is INCREDIBLE. I can’t wait to talk him about all of it!

Join Douglas Stuart and Damian Barr for a conversation online from 8-9pm (UK time). Tickets are £5 plus £0.98 booking fee. CLICK HERE to get tickets.

We look forward to you joining us.

GET TICKETS

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