Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 12 September

Bang Said the Gun launches its poetry anthology, Mud Wrestling With Words, at the Roebuck (8pm, £7 / £5).

John Mullan and Iain Sinclair explore the role the Thames in literature, with the Thames Festival (7.30pm, £7 / £5 + bf).

Harry Eyres presents life advice from ancient poet Horace, at the Bloomsbury Institute (6.30pm, £10 + bf).

Sophie Hannah is at West End Lane Books, talking about her crime novel The Carrier (7pm, free).

Jo Nesbo is signing copies of his latest Harry Hole series at Waterstones Leadenhall Market from 12.30pm, or head to the Coronet Cinema in Notting Hill where he’s in conversation with Emma Kennedy (6pm, £10).

Thomas Glave talks about human rights and oppression at Gay’s the Word, plus poetry from Dorothea Smartt (7pm, £2).

Historian Kate Cooper and novelist Sophie Hardach are at Waterstones Covent Garden discussing faith, love and narrative (6pm).

Take your five minute story on the theme of ‘revolutions’ to the Southbank Centre and tell it at StorySLAM:Live – or just listen (7.45pm, £8).

Shanta Acharya, Anthony Rudolf and Penelope Shuttle perform Poetry in the (Lauderdale) House (8pm, £5 / £3).

Alex Wheatle chats to Mr Gee at Brixtongue, plus Gloria Thomas, K Brown and Rachel Long (7.30pm, £7 / £5).

EP Rose launches The Conspiracy Kid at Waterstones Kensington (7pm).

Friday 13 September

Catherine McNamara launches her new short story collection, Pelt & Other Stories, at the Big Green Bookshop (7pm, free).

Take the kids to Brent Civic Centre for the launch of Rastamouse’s new adventure, Da Micespace Mystery (5pm, free).

Shy Yeti and guests mark Friday 13th and the changing season with a night of autumnal creepiness at the Poetry Cafe (7.30pm, £donation to charity).

Saturday 14 September

Poet in the City presents Fleur Adcock, Clare Pollard and Ahren Warner at the Kings Place Festival (2pm, £4.50).

Lez Henry is at Housmans talking about the concept of ‘whiteness’ (6.30pm, free).

The Alarmist launches issue 3 with The Antipoet, Chris Betts, Bobby Carroll and Andrew James Brown at The Social (8pm, £3).

Lisa Kelly and Niall O’Sullivan join regulars Jeremy Sallon, Tom Bland, Errol McGlashan and Benedict Newbery for Platform 1 at the Poetry Cafe (8pm, £5 / £4).

Young adult thriller novelist James Dawson is signing copies in Waterstones Sutton from 11am.

Sunday 15 September

The Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival begins! Highlights include John Crace and Lucy Mangan, Dannie Abse, Deborah and Lottie Moggach, Judith Kerr and Mark Easton (tickets from £7).

At the Kings Place Festival, Henry Hitchings talks about the English and their manners (2pm, £4.50) and hear Artemis Cooper on Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Broken Road (4pm, £4.50).

Steev Burgess, Anita Pati, Richard Scott and Fran Lock are the performers at Torriano Poets (7.30pm, £5 / £3).

Monday 16 September

Adam Thirlwell hosts a conversation about translation between Julian Barnes, Ali Smith and Sandra Smith at the Royal Society of Literature (7pm, £8 / £5).

The Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival continues: too many events to mention them all, but we’ve picked out Esther Walker, Maggie O’Farrell, Susie Orbach and Lisa Appignanesi, and Sophie Hannah, Sabine Durrant and Christopher Fowler (tickets from £7).

Laydeez Do Comics present Ginny and Penelope Skinner talking about their graphic novel, and Wallis Eates, at Foyles (6pm, free).

Lee Child has a new Jack Reacher thriller out; get copies signed at Waterstones Leadenhall Market from 1.30pm.

Celebrate Russian poetry and prose with The Cauldron, at the Hemingford Arms in Islington (7.30pm, £5).

The Last Tuesday Society (confusingly on Monday) on Mare Street presents Dr. Paul Koudounaris on the subject of 16th century jewelled skeletons (7pm, £7).

Deanna Rodger, Idil Sukan, Dudley Sutton, Sean Wai Keung, Tanya Loretta and Rik the Most perform at the Farrago Freshers’ SLAM! at the RADA Foyer Bar (7.30pm, £6 / £5).

Tuesday 17 September

The Hampstead and Highgate Literary Festival draws to a close, with choice events from John Harvey and Stella Duffy, Tracy Chevalier, Mark Billingham and Robert Ryan, and Artemis Cooper on Patrick Leigh Fermor (tickets from £7).

Historian David Kynaston talks about the birth of modern Britain, at the Southbank Centre (7pm, £8).

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s weekly open mic night, Poetry Unplugged (7.30pm, £5 / £4).

Dan Simpson hosts a head-to-head between poetry and stand up comedy, at the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch (7.30pm, £8 / £7).

Find out about Chaucer and hear some Middle English verse from Graham Fawcett and Sue Aldred at Made in Greenwich (7pm, £10).

Wednesday 18 September

Chris Redmond hosts Tongue Fu at London Wonderground, with guests Murray Lachlan Young, Jan Blake, Rob Broderick (of Abandoman) and Zena Edwards (9.15pm, £12.50).

Judith Mackrell is talking about flappers at Drink, Shop, Do for the Pamflet Salon (7pm, £11).

Rob Evans discusses undercover policing, at Housmans (7pm, £3).

Poets from Brighton and Barnes go head to head in Stanza Bonanza at the Poetry Cafe (7.30pm, free).

Book ahead

Your early warning klaxon for three events likely to sell out: Alexander McCall Smith at Daunt Books Marylebone on 8 October (7pm, £8); Douglas Coupland at the Shaw Theatre also on 8 October (7pm, £10 / £20 including copy of Worst. Person. Ever.); and Malcolm Gladwell at the Lyceum Theatre on 28 October (6.15pm, £8-£60).

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 19 September

Book Slam joins forces with the London African Music Festival at The Flyover in Westbourne Grove, with Noo Saro-Wiwa, Bumi Thomas, Roger Robinson, Belinda Zhawi and Inua Ellams (7.30pm, £12 / £15).

Giles Minton talks to Roland Chambers about British spies in Revolutionary Russia, at Daunt Books Marylebone (7pm, £8).

Email info at welbooks.co.uk to reserve a place for Erin Kelly’s talk and reading from The Burning Air at West End Lane Books (7pm, free).

Arthur Smith, William Andrews, Nick Papadimitriou and others are at comedy venue Invisible Dot’s spoken word night Stories (7.45pm, £8).

Anjan Saha and Jason Barnett host the London Literature Lounge at the Poetry Cafe, open for readings of various genres (8pm, £5).

Friday 20 September

Catch two Ward Wood poets, James W Wood and Peter Phillips, at the Poetry Cafe (4.30pm, free).

Patric Cunnane, Eve Pearce, Isabel Bermudez and Zolan Quobble are at Dodo Modern Poets at the Poetry Cafe (8pm, £7 / £6).

Tom Bamford, Ashleigh French, Paul Ingram, and Connie Scozzaro are the poets performing at Xing the Line in Clerkenwell (7.30pm).

Saturday 21 September

Archway With Words begins, with appearances from Charlie Higson, Joanna Briscoe, Michele Hanson, MH Baylis and Yasmin Whittaker-Khan, and plenty of free stuff for kids.

Like the sound of John Rogers’s This Other London? Hear him talk about it at Housmans (7pm, free).

John Paul O’Neill hosts the Farrago Story SLAM at the Poetry Cafe, with guest readers Gemma Goucher, Isabel del Rio and Errol McGlashan (8pm, £6 / £5).

Spurs legend Ledley King is signing copies of his autobiography at Wood Green’s Big Green Bookshop 12pm-1pm.

Sunday 22 September

Archway With Words continues, with Sue Hubbard, Sarah Hesketh, Mark Hudson, Tina Seskis and Bill Paterson among the events (tickets from £5).

Valerie Darville and Anthony Fisher are the guests at Torriano Poets (7.30pm, £5 / £3).

Monday 23 September

Candy Gourlay is at Archway Library with events for children 8-16 years old (from 4pm, free), then see Natural Born Storytellers at Archway Tavern (8pm, £5) with Archway With Words.

Tuesday 24 September

An excellent night at Archway With Words: Tracy Chevalier and Charlotte Mendelson talk about their work (7pm, £7) and see John Hegley at The Hideaway (8.30pm, £8).

Tony Leon discusses being an ‘accidental ambassador’ in South America at ORT House in Camden for Jewish Book Week (6.15pm, £10).

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the weekly open mic night at the Poetry Cafe (7.30pm, £5 / £4).

Tracy Borman is at Sutton Library talking about witches (7pm, £3.50).

Wednesday 25 September

The Soho Literary Festival starts with a corker: David Hare and Rupert Everett discuss Oscar Wilde with the playwright’s grandson, Merlin Holland (7.30pm, £15).

The Homework regulars (including Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland, Luke Wright and Tim Clare) have produced some monologues – some will be performed by actual actors at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club (8pm, £5).

Jenny Colgan, Cavan Scott and Mark Wright are celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who at Waterstones Gower Street (6.30pm, £5 / £3).

Lots of stuff happening at Archway With Words: for authors, see Michele Hanson, Wendy Wallace and Caitlin Davies discuss writing about the Heath (6.30pm, free) and Paul Morley and Colin Grant talking music (8.15pm, £7).

Roger Robinson headlines Jawdance at Rich Mix alongside Catherine Martindale and others (7.30pm, free).

If you judge a book by its cover, or just like book covers, head to Foyles where MacLehose Press presents the winner of a competition to redesign some of its bestselling titles (6.30pm, free but reserve in advance).

Book ahead

Martina Cole’s at the intimate Big Green Bookshop on 29 October – tickets just a fiver.

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 26 September

John Hegley and Jack Rooke are the guests at Bang Said the Gun‘s stand-up poetry night in The Roebuck. £7 / £5, 8pm

The Book Slam party returns to the Tabernacle with Bernadine Evaristo, Sathnam Sanghera, Dean Atta, Niall O’Sullivan, Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe. £10 / £12, 7.30pm

David Crystal and Hilary Crystal are at Foyles to talk about the history of British language. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Stella Duffy, Victoria Hislop, Helen Simpson and Avril Joy discuss the art of the short story at Waterstones Piccadilly. £3, 6.30pm

The Soho Lit Fest kicks off in earnest. Highlights include Claire Tomalin on Charles Dickens (4pm), Margaret Macmillan on World War One (8pm) and Don Bachardy on Christopher Isherwood (7.30pm), all tickets £9

Alan Williams launches gothic novel The Blackheath Seance Parlour at Waterstones Greenwich. Free, 5pm

There’s a trilogy of mildly erotic poetry nights this week to accompany the Emma Press anthology. It starts at the Tea House Theatre in Vauxhall with Julia Bird, Jon Stone and Jacqueline Saphra. Free, 7pm

Jhumpa Lahiri launches her Man Booker shortlisted novel The Lowland at the Southbank Centre. £10, 7.45pm

William Boyd talks about writing a new Bond novel, at the Southbank Centre. £12 / £10, 7.30pm

John Rogers shows us an overlooked side of the city in This Other London at Belgravia Books. Free, 6.30pm

At Archway With Words, Lucy Popescu, George Nelson and Shannon Kyle talk about their specialist styles (£5, 7pm) while Jah Wobble and Tim Wells take to the stage at the Archway Tavern (£16, 8pm)

Friday 27 September

Gemma Rogers, Roger Robinson and Katie Bonna join Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger for Come Rhyme With Us at Cottons in Islington. £6-£12.50, 7pm

The autumn issue of Poetry London launches at the Southbank Centre with readings from featured poets. Free, 6.30pm

Kate Corkery tells stories for children (free, 12pm) at Archway With Words, or take the kids to meet Rastamouse’s creators (free, 3pm). Later, Polar Bear performs a feature set at Hammer & Tongue’s Poetry SLAM (£6.50, 8pm)

If you couldn’t see John Rogers at Belgravia Books, he’s talking about This Other London at West End Lane Books in West Hampstead. Free, 7.30pm

Maggie Harris and Janet Simon are the guests at Hylda Sims’s Fourth Friday at the Poetry Cafe. £7 / £5, 8pm

Over at the Soho Lit Fest, why not catch Louis Barfe and Laurence Marks talking TV scripts (2pm), Lionel Shriver talking to Rosie Boycott (7pm) or a panel about class featuring Owen Jones, Harriet Sergeant, Henry Hitchings and David Boyle (4pm)? All £9

Saturday 28 September

Jacqueline Wilson premieres her new book, Diamond, at the Bloomsbury Theatre. £9 / £6 + bf, 11am

Archway With Words closes with an Alice in Wonderland-themed party. Free, from 2pm

As one festival closes, another opens. In Wimbledon, there are events about Betjeman (£10, 2pm) and Britten (£15, 7.30pm)

A huge number of poets are raising funds for James Berry’s medical care at the Tabernacle. See Roger McGough, Ian Macmillan, Michael Rosen, Andrew Motion, Maura Dooley, Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Agard and more. £45, 7pm

The next mildly erotic poetry night is in Walthamstow with Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi, Julie Mullen, Stephen Sexton and Ruth Wiggins. £3, 7pm

The excellent Polari closes today’s Soho Lit Fest, with guests DJ Connell, Karen Mcleod, VG Lee and Alex Hopkins (8pm). You can also see David Kynaston on post-war Britain (4pm), Phyllida Law and Damian Barr on family (1pm) and John Sweeney on scientology (5pm). All £9

Hear actors reading writers at the Hill Station in Telegraph Hill. £5 / £3, 8pm

Maitreyabandhu, Sharon Morris and Ian Parks read poetry in the crypt of St Mary’s on Upper Street. £4, 7pm

Sunday 29 September

It’s the last day of the Soho Lit Fest. Catch events with Quentin Blake, Dan Snow, Kate Colquhoun, Claire Armistead and Anne Sebba.

Dan and Peter Snow are the guests at Wimbledon BookFest; the former talking about battle castles (£12.50, 5.30pm), his dad about when Britain burned the White House (£12.50, 7.30pm)

Hylda Sims is organising this week’s Torriano Poets, so should be a good line-up. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 30 September

Robert Harris talks about his new novel An Officer and a Spy at The Telegraph’s offices on Buckingham Palace Road. £18.99 including book, 6.30pm

The British Library hosts a day-long introduction to Boccaccio’s Decameron. £25 / £20, 10am-4pm

Tracy Chevalier talks to Craig Melvin at the Big Book Group at Kings Place, and Matt Haig runs a literary quiz. £9.50, 7pm

Sam Stone, Adam Marek and Charles Lambert help launch Salt Publishing’s anthologies of British and fantasy short stories at Waterstones Piccadilly. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Hear tales of Wimbledon (£10, 4pm) at the eponymous BookFest, and Jenny Colgan with Penny Vincenzi (£15, 8pm)

Tuesday 1 October

Jeanette Winterson and Samuel West read work from this year’s Forward Prize nominated poets, before the award is handed out on stage at the Southbank Centre. £12, 7.30pm

Philip Coggan looks at the threats to Western democracy, at Daunt Books Cheapside. £5, 6.30pm

Today’s Wimbledon BookFest events are sport-themed. Stephen Cooper tells the story of 15 men who played for Rosslyn Park rugby club, all killed in World War One (£7.50, 6.45pm) and cricket’s Jonathan Agnew is in conversation at 8.30pm (£12.50)

Michael Pennington performs as Chekhov in Siberia at the Royal Society of Literature. £8 / £5, 7pm

Arachne Press launches its collection of SF short stories, Weird Lies, at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Free, RSVP by 27 September, 6pm

Wednesday 2 October

The final mildly erotic poetry night takes place at  the Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green with Kirsten Irving, Jon Stone, Anja Konig and Jerrold Yam. £3, 7pm

Andrew Motion, John Hegley and Jo Shapcott read from Keats’s odes and their own work at Keats House. £12 / £10, 7pm

Tom Holland has produced a new translation of The Histories of Herodotus and is discussing it at Daunt Books Marylebone. £8, 7pm

In Wimbledon, Sheila Hollins presents a book club for people with learning and communication disabilities (£3, 4.30pm) and there’s a literary pub quiz at The Swan (£10, 7.30pm)

Hear about the secret history of the Poetry Library as it celebrates its 60th birthday. Free, book in advance, 8pm

Tom Chivers is leading more pilgrimages along the Walbrook to coincide with National Poetry Day. £10, various times to 6 October

Kadija Sesay and Dorothea Smartt share poetry at the Barbican Library. Free, prebook, 7pm

David Levithan talks to Phil Earle about his latest novel, Every Day, at Waterstones Piccadilly. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Max Hastings discusses the start of World War One at Waterstones Hampstead. £5, 7pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Bang Said the Gun is a weekly “stand up poetry” night at The Roebuck in Southwark, a poetry night for people who don’t like poetry. We went a couple of years ago and found it hilarious and rabid, political and trivial. And a lot of fun.

Now the Bang Said team has brought out an anthology of poems by regulars. Covering subjects like the nightly news, aliens, immigration, supermarkets and Chris Huhne, by spoken word stars like John Hegley, Hollie McNish, Kate Tempest, Ian McMillan and Polarbear, they leap off the page and rattle through your head with a force similar to them being read aloud. Which, of course, is what Bang Said the Gun is all about, and this collection comes as near as damnit to making black-and-white type turn technicolour.

It’s a fabulous anthology featuring 24 poets all with distinctive, modern voices. Some funny, some touching, all powerful. Poetry: it’s the new rock n roll.

Bang Said the Gun: Mud Wrestling with Words is available from Burning Eye Books, £12 inc UK p&p.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 3 October

It’s National Poetry Day! The theme is water, but be a bit more original than just reciting The Ancient Mariner and find an event to go to via the NPD website.

The Southbank Centre‘s a good National Poetry Day option. As always, they have a full day of free events with loads of famous poets: Simon Armitage, Patience Agbabi, Francesca Beard, John Hegley and up-and-comers like Jo Bell, Anthony Anaxagorou and Indigo Williams. Free, from 1pm

Angry Sam hosts a poetry SLAM at the Genesis Cinema, sign up on the door. Free, 7pm

Poet Tom Chivers is leading more of his pilgrimages along the Walbrook river until Sunday. Book tickets (£10) or watch a quick trailer. Various times.

We loved their new anthology, now check out Bang Said the Gun in the flesh at The Roebuck. Guests are John Osborne and Jodi Ann Bickley. £7 / £5, 8pm

Jordan Stevens of Rizzle Kicks, Mr Gee, Hollie McNish, Oneness Sankara and El Crisis are the Spoken Word All Stars at Brent Civic Centre. £5 / £4, 7pm

Jazzman John Clarke, Catherine Spencer and Irenosen Okojie are at the Effra Social for Brixtongue. £7 / £5, 7.30pm

Martin Daws performs his spoken word at the Poetry Cafe. £3, 3pm

First in a series of Readings by the River at the Wapping Project is Rachel Cooke. £6, 7pm

Poets and comedians go head to head again at the Comedy Cafe, in Stand Up and Slam hosted by Dan Simpson. £8, 8pm

Jung Chang talks about the making of modern China at the LSE for the Royal Society of Literature. £8 / £5, 7pm

Five writers, including Emma Darwin and Lloyd Shepherd, read from their work and talk about writing history, at the Working Men’s College Library in Camden. Free, 7pm

Caro Fraser launches her new crime novel Errors of Judgement at Waterstones London Wall. 6pm

Friday 4 October

Linton Kwesi Johnson and Caryl Phillips talk to Maya Jaggi about their work and lives at the British Library. £7.50 / £5, 6.30pm

At the Wimbledon BookFest, pass your judgment on a short story competition (£7.50) or see John Sessions and José Maria Gallardo del Rey present Spanish poetry in English (£15). 7.30pm

Ruth Padel and Matthew Hollis read at the Camden Poetry Series. £5 / £4, 7pm

Saturday 5 October

London Lit Weekend starts at King’s Place. Catch Allan Ahlberg, Jung Chang, Elif Shafak, Sathnam Sanghera and Lottie Moggach among others. £6.50 or £9.50 / day pass £30.

Go to the London Welsh Centre for a celebration of Welsh literature, with appearances from, among others, Joe Dunthorne and Huw Edwards. £20, 10am-11pm

There are events for kids (Jez Alborough, David and Carrie Grant, Tony Kane) and adults (Max Hastings, Howard Goodall, Clare Mulley, Jane Thynne) at Wimbledon Bookfest.

John Hegley and friends are at the Poetry Cafe for Elevenses. £6 / £5, 11am

Jacob Sam-La Rose and local young people present contemporary poetry at Deptford Lounge featuring Inua Ellams and Malika Booker. Free, 2.30pm

Lovers of cats, poetry and/or TS Eliot should head for Keats House for some readings. Free with admission to the house, 3pm

Sunday 6 October

Big names in Wimbledon: Eoin Colfer, Jung Chang  (clearly packing in as many events as possible this week), Kate Adie and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

The London Lit Weekend at King’s Place has Penelope Lively, Jeremy Paxman, Jonathan Coe, Meike Ziervogel, Jane Thynne and more. Tickets £6.50-up to £30 for Paxman (including books) or £20 for a day pass which doesn’t include Paxman.

Peter Phillips and Angela Kirby are the guests at Torriano Poets in Kentish Town. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 7 October

Annexe introduces Dorothy Lehane, Eley Williams and Milou Stella in its latest pamphlets, launching with writers’ performances at the Betsey Trotwood. Free, 7pm

Andrew Motion (£15, 6.30pm) is at Wimbledon, as is Deborah Moggach introducing her daughter Lottie (£12.50, 7.45pm), whose debut Kiss Me First is one of the best novels we’ve read all year.

Maureen Johnson and James Dawson discuss the gender gap in young adult fiction, at Waterstones Piccadilly. £4 / £3, 6.30pm

Scott Jurek, author of Eat and Run, is at the Bloomsbury Institute. £10 / £6, 6.30pm

Coffee House Poetry hosts an evening with Mark Doty at the Troubadour on Old Brompton Road. £8 / £7, 8pm

Tuesday 8 October

Douglas Coupland talks about and signs copies of Worst. Person. Ever. at the Shaw Theatre. (We know the site says Thursday 8 October, but we’ve checked and everywhere else confirms they have the day wrong, not the date.) £10 / £20 with book, 7pm

Alexander McCall Smith marks a new installment of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency at Daunt Books Marylebone. £8, 7pm

We don’t want to be cynical about this, and we’re sure her book is very funny, but we must be approaching Christmas: celebrity memoirs are coming out. Jennifer Saunders launches hers at the Southbank Centre. £15 / £12 / £25 inc book, 7.30pm

Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has tales of corruption, prejudice and ineptitude from his book Injustice, at the Southbank Centre. £8, 7pm

Simon Sebag Montefiore is at Waterstones Piccadilly talking about his novel set in Stalin’s Russia. £5 / £3, 7pm

Liars’ League is getting in early for Halloween with stories at the Phoenix. £5, 7.30pm

Biographer Valentina Polukhina is at Waterstones Piccadilly talking about Josef Brodsky and Britain. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

See David Goodhart and Stephen Alambritis talk to Channel 4′s Faisal Islam about immigration (£15, 8.30pm), Joanna Trollope (£10, 7.30pm) or Philip Kerr (£10, 7pm) in Wimbledon.

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s weekly open mic night. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Wednesday 9 October

Brian Sewell and John Bird mark the 110th anniversary of Orwell’s birth, at Foyles. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Penelope Lively discusses her memoir, or ‘view from old age’, Ammonites and Leaping Fish at Keats House. £5, 7pm

Courttia Newland is in conversation at Hackney Central Library. Free, 6.30pm

Faisal Islam is back at Wimbledon, this time talking about his own book The Default Line (£15, 8.30pm). Also see John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (£7.50, 4.30pm).

David Boyle and Brett Scott are at Housmans talking about the new issue of STIR, on the future of money. £3, 7pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 10 October

Helen Fielding is at Foyles signing copies of the new Bridget Jones novel. Yes, it’s out. You may have missed the news due to limited press coverage. You’re pretty much going to have to book a place just to get in the queue. Free event + price of book, 12pm

Some tickets seem to have become available for Michael Palin at Wimbledon BookFest (£15, 8.15pm); and/or you can see Roy Hattersley (£12.50, 6.15pm).

Conn Iggulden has a new historical series, this time set in the Wars of the Roses. Find out about it at Waterstones Piccadilly. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Jeanette Winterson is reading at the Wapping Project. £6, 7pm

Roger Robinson and Stan Skinny are the guests at Bang Said the Gun stand up poetry night in SE1. £7 / £5, 8pm

London Liming meets Chill Pill at Rich Mix, with Simon Mole, John Agard, Jessica Care Moore, Deanna Rodger, Raymond Antrobus, the Roundhouse Poets and more. £10 / £8, 7.30pm

Jean Sprackland, Christopher Reid and Helen Mort perform Poetry at the Print Room in Notting Hill. £10, 7.30pm

Poetry meets biomedical science at Keats House tonight. Free, prebook, 7pm

Friday 11 October

The Wood Green Literary Festival starts with Travis Elborough and Max Décharné talking about the way London history can be stranger than fiction. £3, 7pm

Fleur Adock, Kevin Ireland and CK Stead read their poetry at Birkbeck University. £7 / £5, 7pm

Nigel Williams sets his comic novels around Wimbledon; it’s only appropriate he should be at the Wimbledon BookFest. £10, 8pm

Saturday 12 October

Saturday at Wimbledon BookFest has David Wood and Tim Vine for the kids, and Jay Rayner, Melissa Benn with Viv Groksop and Roddy Doyle talking to James Naughtie for the grown-ups.

Wood Green gets into full swing. We recommend Lucy Inglis on Georgian London (£3, 1.30pm), John Rogers on This Other London (£3, 3.30pm), Jake Arnott and Cathi Unsworth talking noir (£3, 4.30pm) and Crap London (£3, 5pm). There’s loads of stuff for kids, too.

Children’s author Trish Cooke is at Camberwell Library at 11am and Peckham Library at 2.30pm

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera is at Housmans to recount the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende. Free, 6.30pm

Sally Pomme Clayton tells a story of a night visit, with sound and film accompaniment, at Rich Mix. £9 / £7, 8pm

Sunday 13 October

Authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize read from their novels at the Southbank Centre. £12 / £10, 7.30pm

It’s the last day of Wimbledon BookFest, going out in style with Margaret Drabble, Paul O’Prey, Darcey Bussell, Michelle Paver and Cerys Matthews.

Wood Green also draws to a close. Start early with a literary bike ride (£5, 9am), or for the less active try some short crime fiction (£3, 1pm), London’s history through crime fiction (£3, 3pm), the Big Green Bookswap (£3, 3.30pm) or a big quiz with Greg Stekelman (£10 a team, 7.30pm). And again, don’t forget the young ‘uns.

HKB Finn, Grim Chip, Burn After Reading, Domingo Candelario and Cecilia W Anderson join Jumoke Fashola for Jazz Verse Jukebox at Ronnie Scott’s. £8, 7.30pm

Enfield Poets make the trip to Kentish Town as the guests at Torriano Poets. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 14 October

See Simon Mole’s spoken word journey through a family’s evening meal, at the Southbank Centre today and Tuesday. £8, 7.30pm

Ross Sutherland, Amy Acre and Richard Marsh perform at Hammer and Tongue at the Green Note in Camden. £5, 7.30pm

Philip Oltermann and Miranda Seymour talk about the Anglo-German relationship, at the Courtauld Institute for the Royal Society of Literature. £8 / £5, 7pm

Tall Lighthouse presents an open mic night at the Poetry Cafe. 8pm

Tuesday 15 October

Gary Younge and Hannah Pool talk about the forgotten heroes of black history, at the Southbank Centre. £10, 7.45pm

Valerie Russ, who found 10,000 lions in London’s streets (and told us about it) is at the City of Westminster Archives Centre. Free, prebook, 6pm

Peter Conradi, who wrote The King’s Speech, is at Daunt Books Marylebone talking about a meeting between FDR and George VI on the eve of WW2. £8, 7pm

Dorothy Koomson is talking about and reading from her work at Canada Water Library. Free, prebook, 7pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s weekly open mic night, Poetry Unplugged. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

John McHugo gives a concise history of the Arabs at Kensington Central Library in this pre-London History Festival event. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Dan Hancox talks to Paul Mason about a village in Spain trying to create a Communist utopia, at Foyles. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

David Graeber, author of The Democracy Project, is at the Southbank Centre discussing the Occupy movement. £8, 6.30pm

Wilbur Smith signs copies of his latest novel at Waterstones Piccadilly from 5.30pm

Wednesday 16 October

Cat lovers make a purr-line for West Hampstead where Tom Cox is talking about The Good, The Bad and The Purry at West End Lane Books. Free, prebook, 7.30pm

Tim Dee and James Cook present the most requested poems in the history of Poetry Please to mark a new anthology, at Foyles. £3, 6.30pm

Explore the poetry of Vladimir Nabakov with Poet in the City at Waterstones Piccadilly. £9.50 / £7.50, 6.30pm

Dinah Livingstone reads her poems at Swiss Cottage library. Free, 6pm

Poets from Woking and Brondesbury go head to head at the Poetry Cafe‘s Stanza Bonanza. Free, 7.30pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 17 October

Choose your branch of Daunt Books: either Marylebone for Penelope Lively talking about her memoir (£8, 7pm) or Fulham Road for writer and historian Adrian Tinniswood on a family of puritans who helped shape the New World (£5, 7pm)

Justin Cartwright reads from his new novel Lion Heart at West End Lane Books. Free, book via info@welbooks.co.uk / 020 7431 3770, 7.30pm

Peggy Riley and Morgan McCarthy join Scott Pack and Sarah Franklin for the Firestation Book Swap in Windsor. £5 / free with homemade cake, 7.45pm

Malorie Blackman is at Dulwich Library reading from and talking about her work. Free, prebook, 7pm

Liam Williams hosts a night of Stories at Invisible Dot, with Stewart Home, Diane Cardell and Nicholas Hogg. £8, 7.45pm

Steve Larkin and Vanessa Kisuule are the guests at stand up poetry night Bang Said the Gun in SE1. £7 / £5, 8pm

Take the kids to a family poetry evening at Swiss Cottage Library, to hear John Hegley, Grace Nichols, Wes Magee and Kathy Henderson. Free, 7pm

Bernadine Evaristo reads at the Wapping Project. £6, 7pm

Kate Adie talks about her WWI novel Fighting on the Home Front at Grosvenor House Literati. £20 (includes book), 7pm

Nick Barlay and Eve Harris talk about representation and living history in literature at the Wiener Library. Free, 1pm

Comedy and poetry go head to head at Stand Up And Slam at the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch: Dan Simpson, Ben Norris, Amy McAllister and Adam Kammerling are on Team Poetry, Paul Sweeney, Daniel Simonsen, Kieran Boyd and Danny Ward are Team Comedy. £8, 8pm

Friday 18 October

Jan Blake tells the Malian story of The Old Woman, The Buffalo And The Lion Of Manding, with music from Kouame and Raymond Sereba, at the Albany in Deptford. £10 / £8, 7.30pm

Stephanie Gerra and Steve Keyworth host Jukebox Story, an evening of tales inspired by pop songs, at The Harrison Arms in Bloomsbury. Free, 7.30pm

Sue Johns, Angela Stoner and Lesley Hale are Dodo Modern Poets at the Poetry Cafe, all hosted by Patric Cunnane. £7 / £6, 8pm

Saturday 19 October

It’s all Greece at the Southbank Centre. Historian Bettany Hughes and poet Katerina Iliopoulou host an afternoon of Greek fiction and poetry, with guests including Dionysis Kapsalis, Vassilis Amanatidis, Victoria Hislop and Ioanna Karystiani: £10, 2.30pm. Paul Mason talks about the economic crisis in Greece and the rest of Europe: £10, 5.30pm. And Katerina Vrana hosts an evening of literature, music and comedy: £10, 8pm

At the Bloomsbury Festival, DJ Taylor and Helen Smith talk about their novels set in the area (free, 3.30pm), or maybe go on a guided walk and find the poets of Bloomsbury (free, 11am) and keep an eye out for Simon Mole and Sonority Turner, gathering materials to create a found poem at Senate House, where Andrew Whitehead, Ken Worpole, and Cathi Unsworth will be resurrecting London’s lost fictions (free, 2pm)

The Bloomsbury Festival also spills into the Welsh Centre, with a preview of the Dylan Thomas centenary (free, 2-5pm) and RACK press readings from five writers, including John Powell Ward and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch (free, 6pm)

Writer and screenwriter Catherine Johnson reads from her latest young adult novel Sawbones at Peckham Library. Free, prebook, 2pm

Pascale Petit and Lawand discuss the links between art and poetry at the Mosaic Rooms in SW5. Free, 12pm

Sunday 20 October

Apples and Snakes present poets Tommy Sissons, Jack Dean, Selina Nwulu, Lorna Meehan and Chris Stewart as the London leg of a national tour comes to the Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green. £4 / £3, 7.30pm

LiTTLeMACHiNe set poetry to music at the Union Theatre in Madame Life, ‘a poetical conjuration of love, death and music’. £10, 8pm

Part of the Artwalk Festival, Farrago runs a Poetry SLAM at the Arcola Theatre with Dudley Sutton, Idil Sukan, Katie Bonna and your host John Paul O’Neill. £8, 8pm

Monday 21 October

Philosopher Simon Critchley and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster take on Hamlet at the London Review Bookshop. £10, 7pm

Sally Pomme Clayton performs the story of Eros and Psyche at the Soho Theatre. £9 / £7, 8pm

Patrick Marnham and Manu Riche discuss Snake Dance in book and film forms – about the story of the construction and consequences of the creation of the atomic bomb – at the Southbank Centre. £10, 7.45pm

Hear Celtic myths reworked in New Stories from the Mabinogion at Somerset House, with readings from Owen Sheers, Trezza Azzopardi, Russell Celyn Jones, Tishani Doshi, Cynan Jones and more. £7, 7pm

Keats House Poets present a Human Rights Poetry Slam at Senate House, judged by Musa Okwonga and Deanna Rodger (free, 4pm), and later in the same venue Ruth Padel, James Byrne, Chrissie Gittins and David Lee Morgan read at the launch of poetry anthology In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights (free, 6pm)

Tuesday 22 October

Don Share and Maurice Riordan talk over Ezra Pound’s ‘A Few Don’ts’ and whether poets need a new set of guiding principles, at Keats House. £6 / £5, 7pm

Neil Spring talks about his spooky debut novel The Ghost Hunters, at Foyles. Free but prebook, 6.30pm

Poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw and novelist Ali Smith talk about truth at the Twentieth Century Theatre in Westbourne Grove, to mark the Poetry School‘s 16th birthday. £10, 7pm

Sathnam Sanghera and Damian Barr talk about being on the margins of contemporary Britain in a South Asian Literature pre-Festival event at Asia House. £10 / £8, 6.45pm

Jonathan Harvey is top of the bill for salon Polari at the Southbank Centre, with Mo Foster, Diriye Osman, Lyn Guest de Swarte and Robyn Vinten. £5, 7.45pm

Simon Singh unveils the maths secrets behind The Simpsons, at the Southbank Centre. £10, 7.45pm

Still at the Southbank Centre, join in a shared reading of WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood’s The Dog Beneath the Skin. £5, 8pm

Elizabeth Gilbert discusses The Signature of All Things at the Bloomsbury Institute Book Club. £30 (includes book), 6.30pm

Peter Daniels will read and discuss his translations of poems by Vladislav Khodasevich with Martin Sixsmith, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury. Free, 7pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s weekly open mic night, Poetry Unplugged. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Wednesday 23 October

Matt Haynes and Jude Rogers of Smoke magazine read from their book From the Slopes of Olympus to the Banks of the Lea at Bookseller Crow on the Hill in Crystal Palace. £3, 7.30pm

Marcus Chown is at Foyles discussing The Big Stuff of how the world works. We’re still gaping at his book on quantum physics: an excellent popular science writer. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Simon Garfield and Shaun Usher (of Letters of Note) talk about some of the world’s most unusual and inspiring letters at Waterstones Piccadilly. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

There’s another shared audience reading at the Southbank Centre, this time of Ken Smith’s Fox Running. £5, 8pm

Syrian Kurdish poet Golan Haji reads from and talks about his work at the Mosaic Rooms, in both Arabic and English. Free, 7pm

Experience poetry films and spoken word guests and maybe be moved to have a go yourself at Jawdance at Rich Mix in Shoreditch. Free, 7.30pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Tickets have gone on sale for London’s first festival focusing on spoken word performances in all their variety, The Last Word.

The festival has been created by The Roundhouse, home to an annual Poetry Slam and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective. Reflecting a growing interest in performed poetry, The Last Word presents a profusion of stories shared over two weeks, involving both established names and the best of the new generation of poets.

Paul Cree is homegrown Roundhouse talent and his debut show is the autobiographical A Tale from the Bedsit, intimately staged in a room in the Camden Lock hotel. Kate Tempest started her career rapping at strangers on London buses. Now an established poet, playwright, performer and recording artist, her first play Wasted takes you on a trip through the parks and raves and cafes of South London. John Berkavitch’s Shame will be played out in a spoken word, hip hop mash up, with breakdancing.

Olympic poet, Lemn Sissay has created a one-on-one experience, Salander, an installation where words are the performers and the stories come from young people who have been or are currently in care. A new ensemble of 11 spoken word artists, A Cloud of Foxes, have worked with Polarbear to develop Run, a journey through one restless London night and its urban stories.

Alan Ginsberg’s incredible, audacious, iconic poem Howl gets a 2.0 reboot in the hands of Poejazzi and talented newcomers to the Roundhouse Poetry Collective air brand new work, developed over the last eight weeks.

For those who want to to get into this spoken word lark, Inua Ellams hosts a poetry workshop for beginners – a superb opportunity to learn from a gifted poet, performer and playwright. Meanwhile, Brixton-born Laura Dockrill takes a masterclass in performance poetry for 11-25s (read her poem Gherkins). The young folk also get a chance to explore writing collaboratively and try slamming like a champ. Panel discussions explore the tension between page poetry and stage poetry, the role of a producer and the challenges and opportunities of working with digital technology. Bands and artists will discuss spoken word in music with Radio 1′s Huw Stephens.

If you ever thought poetry a soft option for a performer, witness wordsmiths wrestling live at Bang Said The Gun’s Page Match which has such a stellar line up we’ve already got our tickets. We drop just a few names here: Ross Sutherland, Tim Clare, Katie Bonner… yep, see you there.

Call it spoken word, performance poetry, rap or theatre, it’s all storytelling and The Last Word is anything but for this scene.

The Last Word: Festival of spoken word, live performance and storytelling runs at the Roundhouse from 16 November to 1 December 2013.

This is a sponsored article on behalf of the Royal Albert Hall.

When you think of the Royal Albert Hall, you might think Proms or that amazing gig you went to in its beautiful round red space. But did you know there’s lots of free and excellent value entertainment to enjoy outside the main auditorium? Be it exhibitions, comedy, cabaret, spoken word, family events or cosy concerts of all kinds of music, there’s more to the Hall than you thought.

This is just a selection of what’s on this season. Find out more and book via the Royal Albert Hall website.

Milestones

This season, the Royal Albert Hall’s state-of-the-art performance space, the Elgar Room, celebrates two musical milestones:

• 3 November, 5pm: Singer Eve Loiseau honours the 50th anniversary of legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf with a performance of her most-loved songs
• 11 November, 8pm: The National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Chamber Choir perform A Festival of Britten, focussing on Benjamin Britten’s unaccompanied choral work in his centenary year.

Cabaret, Spoken Word and Comedy

The Royal Albert Hall is often thought of as a music performance venue, but cabaret, spoken word and comedy also feature on the listings:

• 23 October, 8pm: Premier spoken word and music night Poejazzi makes its Hall debut with YouTube sensation Hollie McNish and hip hop poet John Berkavitch.
• 2 November, 8.30pm: Abandoman presents innovative mixtape mashups and futurists jams live on stage using the history of hip-hop as its blueprint.
• 5 November, 8pm: World record holding beatboxer Shlomo is joined by singer songwriter Newton Faulkner to explore the art and science of geekdom in his show, Human Geekbox.
• 12 November, 7.45pm: The Antonio Forcione Trio perform the guitar virtuoso’s new album Sketches of Africa with support from London Music Award nominee Katy Carr, known for bringing British and Polish communities together through her music.
• 13 November, 8pm: Cantabile – The London Quartet (Sir Tim Rice’s favourite vocal group, apparently) return to the Elgar Room to perform Master Pieces – hit songs by past stars of the Royal Albert Hall.
• 25 November, 7pm: The Royal Albert Hall teams up with BAFTA to present Conversations with Screen Composers, this season featuring Dario Marianelli, Oscar-winning composer of scores for films including Atonement and Anna Karenina.

Exhibitions

• The Great Pop Prom 50th Anniversary Exhibition features never before seen photographs of the 1963 concert where The Beatles and The Rolling Stones performed together at the Royal Albert Hall. There will also be rare prints, original posters and artwork. The final open day is 19 October. Free, just turn up, 10am-4pm.
• This is followed by The Royal Photographic Society’s International Images for Science Exhibition 2013, showcasing stunning images from a diverse range of photographic techniques, such as scientists creating images to support their research. Free open days are on 10 and 30 November, just turn up, 10am-4pm.

Ignite Series

Ignite brings a selection of jazz, blues and family events to the venue.

• Sunday mornings: Tickets to the weekly ignite brunch include a drink, main course and dessert. Upcoming highlights include internationally acclaimed soloists Morgan Szymanski and Harriet Mackenzie on 20 October (12pm) and on 10 November Man Overboard, who add their own stamp to tunes made famous by the likes of Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt, and Duke Ellington (12pm)
• Friday lunchtimes: Free ignite concerts take place each week in the Cafe Consort, showcasing musicians from around the world.
• 28 October, 12pm and 2.30pm: The Royal Albert Hall’s resident orchestra, Albert’s Band, celebrates all things blues at Family ignite.
• 29 October – 1 November: Bluesfest is the Hall’s first full-scale music festival. During the day, Daytime Stroller tickets will be sold in addition to the evening’s main auditorium concerts, offering festival-goers a variety of Bluesfest ignite sessions, featuring blues & soul-inspired acts.

Jazz

Regular Late Night Jazz sessions also take place in the Elgar Room. Coming up soon are:

• 6 November, 9.45pm: Catch Helenē Clark’s captivating performances of jazz, original song plus interpretations of some of opera’s saddest arias.
• 18, 22, 23 November: The Hall welcomes the EFG London Jazz Festival at which Claire Martin (9.45pm) and Kat Edmonson (9.45pm) showcase their talent, and Ian Shaw sings Joni Mitchell (9.45pm)
• 19 December, 9.45pm: See Gypsy Fire, an acoustic quartet who encompass many different genres.

Classical Coffee Mornings

The Classical Coffee Mornings series runs on Sunday mornings in partnership with the Royal College of Music and some of the performers to catch this season include:

• 3 November, 11am: Trio Incendia, an award-winning piano trio perform Haydn and Shostakovich.
• 1 December, 11am: Saxophonist Savannah Brown, performs pieces by Piazzolla, Maurice and Molinelli.

Find the full line up, check prices and book events via the Royal Albert Hall website. Keep up to date with the Royal Albert Hall via their Twitter and Facebook page. 

Liz Bentley

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 24 October

Tony White shows people round the Science Museum exhibition of Shackleton’s Man Goes South, for his novel of the same name, at – obviously – the Science Museum. £15 (includes book), 2pm

There’s a shared audience reading of Alice Oswald’s A Sleepwalk on the Severn at the Southbank Centre. £5, 8pm

One of our favourite poets and perfomers, Liz Bentley does her show AAA Rating at the Deptford Albany. There’s support from Jonny Fluffypunk. £8 / £6, 7.30pm

Karen McCarthy Woolf joins Cicely Herbert, Piers Plowright and the Apollo Chamber Players at Keats House to celebrate Poems on the Underground. £5, prebook, 7pm

Daniel Cockrill and Sabrina Mahfouz take the floor at Bang Said the Gun. £7 / £5, 8pm

Patsy Antoine, Steve Pope, Sesay and Becky Nana Ayebia Clarke discuss the state of black British publishing at the CLR James library in Dalston. Free, 6.30pm

Susan Cooper joins Marcus Sedgwick at Waterstones Piccadilly to talk about her new novel Ghost Hawk. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

David Edmonds asks Would You Kill The Fat Man? at West End Lane Books. Free, prebook on 020 7431 3770 or info at welbooks.co.uk, 7.30pm

Roger McGough, Julie Mullen and LiTTLe MACHiNe are at the Landmark Arts Centre in Teddington. £14, 7.30pm

The week’s reading at the Wapping Project comes from Andrew Motion. £6, 7pm

Friday 25 October

SJ Fowler launches Enemies, a collection of collaborations with with over 30 artists, photographers and writers, at Toynbee Studies with Penned in the Margins. Free, 7pm

Bernadine Evaristo introduces the tale of Mr Loverman at Deptford Lounge. Free, 7pm

Paul Morley debates the North and (almost) everything in it at Foyles. Free, prebook,6pm

Head to Housmans for the launch of Queer Haunts edited by G Abel-Watters and The Carrier Bag by John Dixon. Free, 7pm

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about her novel The Signature of All Things at the Southbank Centre. £12 / £10, 7.30pm

Gaiutra Bahadur talks about her ‘Coolie Woman’ ancestor at the South Asian Literature Festival. £5, 6.30pm

Words Over Waltham Forest launches with the This Is Me exhibition and performance from Joelle Taylor, at Walthamstow Library. Free, 5pm

Kate Foley and Donald Gardner join Hylda Sims at the Poetry Cafe for Fourth Friday. £7 / £5, 8pm

Saturday 26 October

100 poets read in 50 pairs at a mammoth event at Rich Mix from the Camarade poetry project. Featuring Ross Sutherland, Tom Chivers, Kirsty Irving, Sam Riviere, George Szirtes, Julia Bird and 94 others. Free, from 2pm

Lucy Caldwell, Bill Broady, Ros Barber and graphic novelist Karrie Fransman are the guests at Word Factory #15 in Soho. £12 / £8, 6pm

Forest Poets perform poems inspired by artworks in the Writing on the Wall exhibition in Walthamstow. The reading’s free, at 39 Orford Road, from 7pm

Jonathan Coe and Ali Smith have retold Gulliver and Antigone for children. Hear them talk about it at Daunt Books Marylebone. Free, prebook, 10.30am

Join creative classes in Waltham Forest, or tweet @HerbieHerb who’s writing micropoems throughout the day.

The Travelling Talesman brings his stories to the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green. £5, 7pm

Poetry from Lemn Sissay and Ben Okri is set to music for a celebration of Martin Luther King at the Southbank Centre. £22.50 / £17.50, 7.30pm

Grab a day ticket for the South Asian Literature Festival and choose from events with Sarwat Chadda, Kamila Shamsie, Declan Walsh, Arun Ghosh and more. £15, from 11.30am

Sunday 27 October

Linda Rose Parkes and Nicky Mesch are the guests at Torriano Poets in Kentish Town. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 28 October

Malcolm Gladwell will attempt to change the way you see the world, at the Lyceum Theatre. £8-£60, 6.15pm and 8.30pm

Joe Sacco talks to David Boyd Haycock about WWI and trench warfare, at the London Review Bookshop. £10, 7pm

Martina Cole is at North Chingford Library (free, 7pm) as part of Words Over Waltham Forest. Or head to Leytonstone Library to hear John Rogers talking about This Other London (free, 7.30pm)

Tuesday 29 October

Celebrate the Poetry Library’s 60th birthday at the Southbank Centre with Ian McMillan, Emily Berry, Fleur Adcock, John Agard, Daljit Nagra and many more. £15 / £12, 7.30pm

Daljit Nagra, storyteller Vayu Naidu and musician Ranjana Ghatak re-imagine the Ramayana at the British Library for the South Asian Literature Festival. £7.50 / £5, 6.30pm

Crime queen Martina Cole is in conversation at the Big Green Bookshop. £5, 7pm

Storyteller and image-maker Dave McKean talks about his work and latest project Nine Lives at Foyles. £6, 6.30pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the weekly open mic night at the Poetry Cafe. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Wednesday 30 October

The fantastic Homework team (Ross Sutherland, Joe Dunthorne, Luke Wright, Tim Clare, John Osborne) take up the theme of transport at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. £5, 7.30pm

Another chance to catch Liz Bentley, this time with Rob Auton at the Clissold Leisure Centre in Stoke Newington. £5 / £3, 8pm

VG Lee, David McGrath, David Mildon and Cherry Potts tell haunting tales at The Ivy House in Nunhead, plus flash fiction from the floor. Free, 8pm

Forward Prize winning poet Emily Berry is at Lutyens & Rubinstein. £8, 7pm

Neil Spring gives an illustrated talk about his debut novel, The Ghost Hunters, at Waterstones Gower Street. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

AC Grayling is at Waterstones Hampstead talking friendship (and his new book, Friendship). £6 / £4, 7pm

Two Daunt Books events: Philip Kerr is in Hampstead talking about the latest in the Bernie Gunther series Prayer (£5, 7pm) while in Marylebone, Monocle founder Tyler Brûle offers a guide to better living (£8, 7pm)

Guy Adams talks about his novel The Clown Service with James Barclay at the Big Green Bookshop. Free, 7pm

David Lyall reads from his new collection A Million Acts of Resistance for Words Over Waltham Forest. Free, 5.30pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 31 October

Julia Bird, Amy Key, Richard O’Brien and Sara-Mae Tuson read perform mildly erotic poetry at the Poetry Cafe. £5, 7.30pm

Poetry and comedy go head to head in Stand Up and Slam at the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch. Team Poetry is headed by Dan Simpson, Team Comedy by Paul Sweeney and featuring Rob Auton, Keith Jay, Daniel Simonsen, Tom Deacon, Joel Dommett and Thom Tuck. £8, 8pm

William Sutcliffe discusses his novel The Wall, set in the West Bank, with Selma Dabbagh at the Mosaic Rooms. Free, 7pm

Pete the Temp and Patience Agbabi are the guests at Bang Said the Gun. £7 / £5, 8pm

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and others look at the British response to the Ugandan-Asian exodus in 1972, for the South Asian Literature Festival. Free, 6.30pm

Poet in the City presents an event all about Sappho, at the Bloomsbury Theatre with Tony Harrison, Margaret Reynolds, Edith Hall, Josephine Balmer and Richard Parkinson. £9.50 / £7.50, 7pm

Friday 1 November

The Richmond Literature Festival starts with Keats House Poets and the Read Right Here project performing at the Old Town Hall. Free, 6pm

Sarah Butler writes live for you, and is taking requests, at Woolfson & Tay as part of the Live Writing Series of events around London. Free, from 11.30am

Amit Chaudhuri, Jeet Thayil and Ted Hodgkinson discuss addictive cities at the Free Word Centre, for the South Asian Literature Festival‘s closing night. £5, 7pm

Young spoken word talent perform alongside Hollie McNish and Joelle Taylor in Slambassadors UK at the Southbank Centre. Free, 4pm

Follow the Slambassadors event with the winning stories from HMP Holloway and an open mic with StorySLAM:Live at the Southbank Centre, hosted by Malika Booker. £8, 7.45pm

Saturday 2 November

Spend an evening with The Vampyre, a lecture by Andrew Stott, the biographer of John Polidori, at St Pancras Old Church. £10, email st.p.appeal@gmail.com to book, 6pm

Go on a free storywalk around E17 with Words Over Waltham Forest at 11am and 2pm

Jennifer Gray and Amanda Swift are at the Castelnau Library in Richmond talking guinea pigs. £3, 11am

Sunday 3 November

Hear the shortlisted authors of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2013 at the Southbank Centre. £12 / £10, 8pm

Inua Ellams hosts Book Slam at the Tabernacle, with William Boyd, Emylia Hall and Ana Silvera. £10 / £12, 7.30pm

In Richmond, Simon Garfield talks about letter writing (£8.50 / £6, 2.30pm) and Peter Conradi reveals the story of when FDR met King George VI at Hyde Park on Hudson (£10 / £8.50, 7pm)

The Jane Duran group, Martina Thomson, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Jo Roach and Nora Hughes, are the guests at Torriano Poetry. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 4 November

Mexican/American poet Mark Gonzales performs at Housmans. £10, 6.45pm

There’s a day of events featuring Nikesh Shukla, Philip Hensher, Gemma Seltzer and more, plus a mini-fair for writers with the Writing Platform at Rich Mix. £44 / £39, from 10am

Andrew Stott is back, this time in Richmond to talk about The Vampyre Family and the curse of Byron. £8 / £6.50, 7pm

Colette Bryce, Ruby Robinson, Hugo Williams and Maurice Riordan launch the new issue of Poetry Review at the London Review Bookshop. Free, prebook, 7pm

Exiled Writers Ink celebrates Day of the Dead at the Poetry Cafe. £4, 7.30pm

Jo Shapcott, Christopher Reid, Richard Douglas Pennant, Huw Warren and Stuart Silver consider what we should have said, at Coffee House Poetry. £8 / £7, 8pm

Tuesday 5 November

Find out about Georgian London with Lucy Inglis at the Big Green Bookshop. £3, 7pm

Ian Rankin is signing copies of the new Rebus at West End Lane Books from 6pm

John Hegley and Cicely Herbert read poems about London and trains at the London Transport Museum. £15 / £12, 6.30pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s open mic night, Poetry Unplugged. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Historian Ben Urwand is at Waterstones Gower Street talking about Hollywood’s dark dealings with the Nazis. £5 / £3, 6.45pm

Wednesday 6 November

Ian Rankin’s at Waterstones Piccadilly talking about Rebus. £5 / £3, 7pm

Federico Campagna launches his new book The Last Night: Anti-work, Atheism,  Adventure, at Housmans. £3, 7pm

Translators Frank Wynne and Ollie Brock go head-to-head with rival versions of the intro to Albert Camus’s The Outsider, at the Southbank Centre. £5, 7.30pm

Liz Bentley and Caroline Smith are Louche Women at the Poetry Cafe. 7.30pm

Writing From Prison is an evening showcasing writing by offenders, secure patients and detainees, at the Southbank Centre. £8, 7.45pm

Iain Sinclair gives a talk on the Beat poets at Somerset House, introduced by Deborah Moggach. £8 / £5, 7pm

Max Hastings is in Richmond discussing the tragedy of World War One. £10 / £8.50, 7.30pm

Steve Parker launches his book on the history of medicine at Barts Pathology Museum. £6, 6.30pm

Helen Chandler and Jamie Baywood talk about their debut novels and lives at Walthamstow Library. Free, 7pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 7 November

Hear stories inspired by pop songs with Jukebox Story at The Harrison in Kings Cross. £6 / £5, 7.30pm

The Very Grimm Brothers and Roundhouse Slam champions join Bang Said the Gun for stand up poetry. £7 / £5, 8pm

Nii Ayikwei Parkes moderates an evening talking about reconfiguring truth at the Southbank Centre, with Brian Chikwava and Jennifer Makumbi. £8, 7pm

Lisa Jardine reads at the Wapping Project. £6, 7pm

Jo Shapcott wraps up her Keats House residency with a reading of new poems. £5, prebook, 7pm

The Gentle Author presents a Magic Lantern show of photos of London at Woolfson & Tay. £3, 7pm

Gemma Seltzer will be popping up all over London doing some live writing. Keep an eye out.

Ross Sutherland performs his fantastic mix of hypnotic video and poetry at the Rosemary Branch Theatre. One of the best things we’ve ever seen. £5, 7.30pm

Lloyd Bradley, Daniel Rachel and Xidus Pain talk sex, drugs and rock n roll at Salon XVLIII. £15, 7.30pm

Michael Arditti reads from The Breath of Night at West End Lane Books. Free, prebook at info@welbooks.co.uk or @WELBooks, 7.30pm

Graham Farmelo talks about Churchill’s bomb at the Richmond Literature Festival. £7.50 / £6, 7.30pm

Friday 8 November

Inua Ellams hosts Scratch Mixer at the Southbank Centre, with spoken word artists Dfiza Benson, Talia Randall, Dan Simpson, Nigel of Bermondsey, Ronak Patani and Vanessa Woolf. £5, 7.30pm

Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger host Come Rhyme With Me at The Albany in Deptford. Guests include Indigo Williams, Phoenix Martins and Bagel Project (and you get food). £5, 7pm

Stella Duffy, Tania Hershman, Adam Marek and Alex Preston are at the chilly Earlsfield Cemetery chapel for Word Factory. £15-£5, 7pm

Daisy Waugh is in Richmond talking about her latest two novels. £10 / £8.50, 7.30pm

Join an absolute ton of poets for the launch of South Bank Poetry’s Autumn/Winter issue at the Poetry Cafe. £5.50 / £4.50, 7.30pm

Iain Sinclair launches American Smoke at F in Stoke Newington. Free, 6pm

Saturday 9 November

A one day festival of writing and language, go to Wordstock at the Free Word Centre with guests including Kate Moss, David Parfitt and Dick Mullender. £72 / £62, from 9am

The Comica Festival presents two events at Foyles: Benjamin Dickson, Hunt Emerson, John Spelling and Tariq Ali discuss a visual history of protest among English speaking people (£6, 4pm) and then Gareth Brookes, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Katie Green, John Miers and Woodrow Phoenix join writer and curator Paul Gravett to talk about graphic novels in the 21st century (£6, 6.30pm)

Paul Stones, Ros Barber, Michael Parker, Greg Downing, Jonny F, Justin Coe, Ptolyme, Yvonne and Bernadette Cremin perform at the Poetry Cafe for the Rolling Under Revue. £1, 2pm

Mark the 60th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s death at Keats House. Free with admission to the house, 3pm

Glyn Maxwell reads at Poetry East. £8, 7.30pm

Patric Cunnane, Li Yan and Maggie Oke are the Dodo Modern Poets, performing in SW19. £5 / £4, 8pm

Sunday 10 November

Enjoy a Georgian Sunday lunch with John Keats (OK, Julia Bird and Mike Sims reading Keats) in Walthamstow for Words Over Waltham Forest. £30, 1pm

Charles Moore talks about Margaret Thatcher from his authorised biography of her, at Richmond. £18 / £15, 7.30pm

Monday 11 November

Lauren Child, Julia Eccleshare, Laura Dockrill and Ian Beck discuss their favourite children’s book at the British Library. £7.50 / £5, 6.30pm

The Brook Green Festival of Books starts with Lauren St John talking about her work and first novel for adults, The Obituary Writer, at Bush Theatre. £10, 7pm

Sign up for open mic with Kid, I Wrote Back at Bar Kick. 7pm

Viv Albertine, Emily Berry, Kate Tempest, Marawa the Amazing and Bryony Kimmings read at the Faber Social with Tatty Devine. £7, prebook, 7pm

Stephen Morrison-Burke is the special guest of Hammer and Tongue at the Green Note in Camden. £5, 7.30pm

Tuesday 12 November

Actors including Fresh Meat’s Zawe Ashton, Lindsay Duncan and Paterson Joseph read from the Forward Book of Poetry 2014 at the Bush Theatre for the Brook Green Festival of Books. £10, 7pm

Liars’ League stories are all about Cloak and Dagger, at the Phoenix. £5, 7.30pm

Simon Sebag Montefiore talks about his novel One Night in Winter with Suzy Feay at Daunt Books in Marylebone. £8, 7pm

Andrew Marr discusses his short book about drawing, at Foyles. Free, 6.30pm

Poets Anne-Marie Fyfe and Robyn Bolam read at the Richmond Literature Festival. £6 / £5, 7pm

Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams read published and unpublished poetry at the London Review Bookshop. £10, 7pm

José Ovejero and Javier Montes launch new novels at the European Bookshop on Warwick Street. 7pm

Michele Hanson, Wendy Wallace and Caitlin Davies discuss writing about the Heath at West Hampstead Library. Free, prebook via West End Lane Books at info@welbooks.co.uk or @WELBooks, 7.30pm

Perform your own stuff at the Poetry Cafe open mic night hosted by Niall O’Sullivan. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Wednesday 13 November

Rob Auton plays Ye Olde Rose and Crown in Walthamstow, part of Words Over Waltham Forest. £5.95, 8pm

Peter Culshaw is at Housmans recounting his travels with Manu Chao. £3, 7pm

The winner of Polari’s First Book Prize 2013 is announced tonight at the Southbank Centre, with guests Charlotte Mendelson, Dean Atta, Rosie Garland, Patrick Flanery, Helen Lederer and singer Dee Chanelle. £5, 7.45pm

Ramachandra Guha is in conversation with Lucy Moore about Gandhi, at Daunt Books Fulham Road. £5, 7pm

Labour MP Alan Johnson is in Brook Green talking about his memoir. £10, 7pm

John Grindrod launches Concretopia, about rebuilding postwar Britain, at Bookseller Crow. Free, 7pm

David Leavitt discusses his new novel, The Two Hotel Francforts, at Woolfson & Tay. £3, 7pm

Liam Hogan, Cherry Potts, Emily Bullock, Nicolas Ridley and Joan Taylor-Rowan tell Armistice Tales at the Ivy House in Nunhead. 8pm

More live writing at the Jewish Museum today. The author is TBC.

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 14 November

Not your usual literary event: Viv Groskop, Jenny Colgan and Alex Marwood are doing a signing and Q&A at DFS – yes, the furniture shop – on Tottenham Court Road for Children in Need. Free / donation. 6.45pm

Dan Simpson and Adam Kammerling are the guest performers at Bang Said the Gun in SE1. £7 / £5, 8pm

Jasper Gibson reads from his debut novel, A Bright Moon for Fools, at Woolfson & Tay. £3, 7pm

There are rumours on Twitter that the Wapping Project is closing soon: go hear Sathnam Sanghera and have a meal while you still can. £6, 7pm

Mark Forsyth reveals The Elements of Eloquence at West End Lane Books. Free, prebook, 7.30pm

The UK SLAM! Championships take place at the RADA Foyer Bar, with guests Greta Bellamacina, AF Harrold, Richard Marsh and host John Paul O’Neill. £6 / £5, 7pm

Catch Russian Vera Pavlova talking about her work at Pushkin House. £7 / £5, 7.30pm

JJ Abrams is signing copies of his new book S at Waterstones Piccadilly from 6pm, but be prepared to queue earlier than that.

Hear about the life of Wilkie Collins from Andrew Lycett at Waterstones Hampstead. £6 / £4, 7pm

Friday 15 November

The Write Idea Festival starts at the Idea Store in Whitechapel – everything’s free. The festival starts with Deborah and Lottie Moggach, 7pm

Polish poet and novelist Jacek Dehnel is at the London Review Bookshop with his translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones. £10, 7pm

At Richmond Old Town Hall Viv Groskop explains why she played 100 comedy gigs in 100 days, £10, 8pm

Apples and Snakes and Walkers Books present the launch of Steve Tasane’s debut novel for young people, Blood Donors, at the Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green. £4 / £3, 7.30pm

Harry Burke, Sophie Collins and Timothy Thornton read in advance of a new Test Centre anthology, at Stoke Newington Church Centre. Free, 7.30pm

Saturday 16 November

Lots of things happening at the free Write Idea Festival: try and catch Booker-shortlisted Alison Moore (5pm), Pete Brown talking about the George Inn (2pm), The Gentle Author on Spitalfields (5pm), spoken word from Red Army Fiction (6pm) and science with Robin Ince (7pm)

Kate Tempest starts a run of her play Wasted at the Roundhouse, part of The Last Word festival. Until 24 November, £15 / £12.50, 8pm

Thurston Moore, Iain Sinclair, Lee Harwood and Tom Raworth are in Stoke Newington to launch issue 4 of Test Centre magazine. £8 + bf, 7pm

Note William Blake’s birthday with a Largactyl Shuffle (Literary Walk to us) from CoolTan Arts. Start at Maudsley Hospital and explore south London’s literary heritage. Free / donation, 11.45am

Join Gareth E Rees, author of Marshland: Dreams and Nightmares on the Edge of London, for a walk round Hackney marshes. Meet at the Princess of Wales pub car park, contact Pages of Hackney for more info. Free, 12.45pm

Ralf Webb, Rebecca Swirsky and Megan Bradbury read at the Society Club to mark the new-look Ambit magazine. £5, 7pm

Take your age 4+ kids to the Discover Children’s Story Centre in Stratford to meet authors Claire Freedman and Sue Hendra and find out all about spider sandwiches. Free, 2.30pm

Sunday 17 November

The Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre throws open its doors. Go see what’s inside. Free, 11am-7pm

Help write an epic communal poem as Words Over Waltham Forest comes to a close. Free, 1.30pm-3.30pm

Lee Langley and guests are in Richmond talking about their desert island books. £15 / £14, 7pm

The final day of the free Write Idea Festival features Jay Rayner (2pm), poet Maitreyabandhu (2pm), Stella Duffy (5pm) and a performance about Samuel Pepys (3.30pm)

Katherine Gallagher and Jane McLaughlin read at Torriano Poets. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 18 November

Max Hastings talks about Catastrophe, his book about World War One, at the Brook Green Festival of Books. £10, 7.30pm

The London History Festival begins. Charles Moore discusses his biography of Margaret Thatcher at Waterstones Kensington. £5 / £3, 7pm

Wendy Shutler and Andre Cuthbert read poems at the Poetry Cafe, plus open mic. £5 / £4, 8pm

Tuesday 19 November

Rachel Cooke talks to Viv Groskop about 10 extraordinary women of the 1950s, at Foyles. Free, prebook, 6.30pm

Gillian Darley and David McKie talk with Owen Hatherley about the life and work of Ian Nairn, at the London Review Bookshop. £10, 7pm

Chuck Palahniuk and Andy Zaltzman are at Book Slam at the Clapham Grand, hosted by Ross Sutherland. That’s an embarrassment of riches right there. £8 / £10, 7.30pm

Peter Clark talks about what Kent meant to Dickens, at Belgravia Books. Free, 6.30pm

Zena Edwards, Sureshot and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze mark 50 years since Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech with newly commissioned poetry, film and spoken word at the Free Word Centre. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Michael Smith celebrates the flaneurs and drifters of Soho at the Richmond Literature Festival. £15 / £13.50, 7pm

If you missed Max Hastings in Brook Green on Monday he’s in Kensington Central Library talking WWI for the London History Festival. £5 / £3, 7pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts Poetry Unplugged open mic night at the Poetry Cafe. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Alison Weir talks about Elizabeth of York at Sutton Library. Free, 7pm

Wednesday 20 November

Michael Kossew hosts Natural Born Storytellers on the theme of ‘I Didn’t Do It’ at the Camden Head. Performers include Josh Howie, Matt Price, Juliet Myers, Damian Kingsley and others. Free, 8.15pm

Writers including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy, Edna O’Brien, Christopher Reid and Tom Paulin take part in a tribute to Seamus Heaney at the Southbank Centre. £12 / £10, 7.30pm

Join Carl-Johan Vallgren and Marie Hermanson for an evening of Swedish literature at Daunt Books Chelsea. Free, prebook, 7pm

Barry Norman talks to Claire Armitstead about his memoir and wife Diana, at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. £10 / £12, 8pm

Joseph Boyden reads from and talks about his novel The Orenda at Woolfson & Tay. £3, 7pm

Lucinda Hawksley uncovers the mystery of Princess Louise at Waterstones Kensington. 7pm

Have a literary lunch with John O’Farrell in support of First Story, at the Polish Club in South Ken. £60, 12pm

Jacob Sam-La Rose is the Live Writer in residence at Deptford Lounge.

Crime writers Gordon Ferris, Elly Griffiths and Sharon Bolton discuss the genre at Twickenham Library. £7.50 / £6, 7.30pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Go to Waterstones Covent Garden on Thursday

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

The week’s festivals

The Richmond Literature Festival is on all week, with authors including Edward Hollis, Sandra Hempel and Tom Cheshire. Tickets £6-£15

The Last Word at the Roundhouse in Camden is also on all week. Have a look at our preview and catch work by Kate Tempest, Huw Stephens, Paul Cree and others. Tickets £5-£15

Dan Snow, Marc Morris, Antonia Fraser and Saul David appear at the London History Festival in Kensington. Tickets £5 / £3

The Brook Green Festival of Books finishes on 21 November with Deborah Moggach talking about her life, work and novel Heartbreak Hotel. Tickets £10

The Second Light Autumn Festival at the Art Workers Guild is all about Sylvia Plath, 21-23 November, with poets including Moniza Alvi, Katherine Gallagher, Gillian Allutt and Esther Morgan. Tickets £20-£70, Saturday main reading £7 / £5

All the authors are comedians at the Chortle Comedy Book Festival at venues in Ealing, starting 22 November. Take a look at our picks of the fest. Tickets £6-£16

The Peckham Literary Festival starts 25 November. Catch Roger Clarke, Martin Bannister and a night of spoken word with Kid I Wrote Back’s Chimene Suleyman at Review. Tickets £3

Thursday 21 November

Jane O’Grady, Angus Kennedy and Edward Skidelsky discuss the great minds of today at Foyles. Free, 6pm

Adelle Waldman talks to Alain de Botton about her novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. £10 / £12, 8pm

Margaret MacMillan gives an account of the events leading up to the Versailles Treaty, at Daunt Books Marylebone. £8, 7pm

Raba’i al-Madhoun, translator Elliott Colla and Rosie Goldsmith read from and talk about The Lady From Tel Aviv at the Mosaic Rooms. Free, 7pm

13 Pages holds the first of fortnightly workshops at the Poetry Library. Free, prebook, 7pm

John Rogers brings This Other London to Stories at Invisible Dot, along with Will Adamsdale and conceptual poet Matthew Lee Knowles. £8, 7.45pm

Come meet The Gentle Author at Waterstones Covent Garden. 6pm

Ross Sutherland and Morris Folk Choir are the guests at Bang Said the Gun in SE1. £7 / £5, 8pm

Stephanie Seegmuller and Adam Freudenhem, the people behind Pushkin and Peirene Presses, wonder just how dead the book actually is, at Woolfson & Tay. Free, 7pm

Susan Ee talks about her latest dystopian fantasy thriller World After at the Post Apocalyptic Book Club at Waterstones Piccadilly. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Witold Szabłowski launches his debut book The Assassin from Apricot City, at the Free Word Centre. Free, 6.30pm

Henry Marsh reads at the Wapping Project. £6, 7pm

Friday 22 November

Wood Green’s Big Green Bookshop hosts an evening of winter poetry and open mic, plus mince pies and mulled wine. £3, 7pm

Pimlico Library hosts a writers’ panel with Gabrielle Kimm, Linda Stratmann and Hallie Rubenhold focusing on sex and scandal in Georgian / Victorian England. Free, prebook, 6pm

Hylda Sims hosts Fourth Friday at the Poetry Cafe with Maurice Riordan and Kathryn Maris. £7 / £5, 8pm

Michael Connolly is signing copies of The Gods of Guilt at Waterstones Leadenhall Market from 12.30pm

Saturday 23 November

Annexe Magazine runs day-long festival Interrobang at the Betsey Trotwood with workshops, performances, poetry and prose from writers including Amber Massie-Blomfield, Dorothy Lehane, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Inua Ellams and Talia Randall. £7 / £15 with We Make Books workshops, 12-11pm

Anandi Ramamurthy looks at the British Asian youth movements of the 70s and 80s, at Housmans. Free, 6.30pm

Theatre Renegade launches a new anthology, Courting Drama, at Bush Theatre before performances of new writing. Launch 3.30pm, performances £13.50, 5pm / 7.30pm

Amnesty’s legendary book sale is back on in Blackheath, 10am-4pm

There’s a flash fiction slam with Farrago Poetry at the Poetry Cafe. £6 / £5, 6.30pm

Sunday 24 November

Barbara Cumbers, Nigel Lawrence, Jo Pestel and Ruth Higgins are the guests at Torriano Poets. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Wintry poems by Blake, Frost (ha) and Keats are read and sung at Keats House. Free, 2pm

Monday 25 November

Jackie Kay, Ali Smith, Diana Evans, Eleanor Bron and Melissa Benn raise money for Islington’s Maya Centre, at the Free Word Centre. £35 (plus donation if you want), 6.30pm

Ian McEwen (note spelling) launches his collection Intermittent Beings at the Poetry Cafe. Free, 7.30pm

Tuesday 26 November

Jo Brandon, Kelley Swain, Jon Stone and Rachel Piercey read at a Valley Press / Emma Press event at The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell. £4, 7pm

Kamila Shamsie and John Freeman talk about what makes a great novel, at Daunt Books Marylebone. £8, 7pm

The true story of Hanns Alexander, who pursued Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, is told by Thomas Harding at Keats House. £5, 7pm

Giles Milton, Catherine Merridale and Vladimir Alexandrov explore personal stories of the Russian Revolution at Waterstones Piccadilly. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Daniel Hahn hosts Ollie Brock and Rosalind Harvey in a translation slam at the Free Word Centre. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s open mic night, Poetry Unplugged. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Get a three course dinner and three true stories from Justin Rollins, Jo Galloway and Russell Hall with Storythyme at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. £30, 6.30pm

Wednesday 27 November

Amy Tan reads from her new novel The Valley of Amazement at Foyles. £5, 6.30pm

The final Homework of the season has the gang (Ross Sutherland, Joe Dunthorne, Luke Wright, John Osborne, Tim Clare) host their own chat show at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. £5, 7.30pm

Lisa Appignanesi talks to Adam Phillips about his essays and psychoanalysis at Lutyens & Rubinstein. £8, 7pm

Sabrina Chap talks about creativity and self destruction, the topic of Live Through This collection of essays, at Woolfson & Tay. £3, 7pm

Kat Francois hosts Jawdance at Rich Mix, with AJ Mckenna and open mic. Free, 7.30pm

Deborah Tyler-Bennett, poet-in-residence at Keats House in 2010, reads poems from Kinda Keats. Free, 7pm

Poets Anonymous gather at the Poetry Cafe. 7.30pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Bernadine Evaristo

We love a good literary festival, we do, and we especially like it when those literary festivals provide access to authors, ideas and general excellence for not much money. One of the best of the bunch is the Peckham Literary Festival, back for its seventh year with all tickets costing £3, redeemable against book purchases.

There’s a great range. For non-fiction try Roger Clark talking about Ghosts to Review Bookshop’s resident, and award winning, novelist Evie Wyld; for fiction, Martin Bannister reads from and talks about his Camberwell-set debut novel A Map of Nowhere; there’s spoken word presented by Kid, I Wrote Back’s Chimene Suleyman; performed stories from Liars’ League; hugely critically acclaimed writer Bernadine Evaristo; local poetry in a pub; and an interesting afternoon of being insulted by Mr Bingo.

All events take place at the Review Bookshop on Bellenden Road (apart from the Poetry Society’s Southwark Stanza night of poetry and music, which is in the Montpelier pub; one of the best in Peckham according to you lot) between 25-30 November. See the festival website for more information and to book.

Image by Kris Sayer

Imagine sitting in a Victorian warehouse, all wrapped up against the cold, sipping a rum-laced hot chocolate and listening to a top notch spoken word performer tell dark and fantastical fairytales, then heading off to see an art installation, watch a couple of short films, hear a band and maybe catch a puppet show.

Imagine no longer: the Crick Crack Club’s Festival of Fairytales for Grown Ups takes over the Bargehouse behind the OXO Tower for five days in December, turning the five storey building into a treasure trove of performance and delight. The core is the fairytales: two for adults each evening (one on the final day) and four daytime performances for families, all different stories and tellers. Do you want to hear about Scandinavian gods or how to settle a debt with a chicken? Gory deaths and grisly fates? Take your pick.

Before and in between each performance there’s plenty of time to wander through the building and discover what else is happening, or just hit the bar. We also love their list of things you should know; apparently the Bargehouse gets very, very cold (take mittens).

The Festival of Fairytales for Grown Ups runs 11-15 December at the Bargehouse, SE1. Tickets for evening shows are £5.95 online / £6 on the door, and for family shows £4.36 online / £4 on the door. If you live in the SE1 9 postcode there are some free tickets available to the family shows.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Festivals

Fantastic stuff as The Last Word at the Roundhouse comes to a close on 1 December. Much is sold out but you can still see the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, Paul Cree, John Berkavitch, Katie Bonna, Molly Naylor, a new play by Inua Ellams, workshops with Laura Dockrill and Sean Mahoney, and get a custom poem from the Poetry Takeaway.

The Peckham Literary Festival closes with Bernadine Evaristo and stories from Liars’ League.

The Richmond Literature Festival ends on 30 November, so still time to see Essie Fox, Lloyd Shepherd, Damian Dibben, Carole Seymour-Jones and Anne Sebba.

Artemis Cooper rounds off the London History Festival on 28 November in Kensington, talking about Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Simon Singh, Marcel Lucont and Johnny Vegas are among the authors appearing at the Chortle Comedy Book Festival in Ealing until 29 November.

Thursday 28 November

Simon Sebag Montefiore talks about his new historical novel with Vanora Bennett at Daunt Books Fulham Road. £5, 7pm

Dave Cohen launches How to be Averagely Successful at Comedy at the Big Green Bookshop, with your host Arthur Smith. Free, 8pm

Ken Worpole talks to Rachel Lichtenstein about the new English landscape. It’s at the London Review Bookshop, who’ve just redesigned their website. Nice, isn’t it? £10, 7pm

Jo Shapcott, Daljit Nagra and Mimi Khalvati are among the poets reading at the Free Word Centre with Arvon. Free, prebook, 7pm

Alex Dimitrov and Maureen Duffy read their poetry at Gay’s the Word. £2, 7pm

Comedy and poetry go head to head in Stand Up and Slam at the Comedy Cafe in Shoreditch. Dan Simpson, Paul Sweeney and Simon Mole fight it out. £8, 8pm

Victoria Brittain talks to Haifa Zangana about the forgotten women of the war on terror at the Mosaic Rooms. Free, prebook, 7pm

Chris Arning hosts a night for new voices, with Anouche Sherman, Irina Jauhiainen, Romina Mirza, Tom Bland and more, at the Poetry Cafe. £4 / £3, 7.30pm

Charles Palliser is at Waterstones Islington reading from and talking about his new novel Rustication. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Friday 29 November

Amy Tan, Malika Booker, How About Beth and Felicity Ward are all at Book Slam at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill. £8, doors 6.30pm

John Hegley, Francesca Beard and Lemn Sissay perform their poetry at Clissold Leisure Centre at the end of an unusual Apples and Snakes residency. £4.60, 7pm

Paul Chandler runs a free show with guests and open mike at the Poetry Cafe. 8pm

Bill Bryson’s signing copies of One Summer: America 1927 at Waterstones London Wall from 1pm

Saturday 30 November

Bernadine Evaristo, Lloyd Bradley, Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohamed take part in Black Book Swap at the Ritzy in Brixton. £7.50, from 12pm

Hear the poems of Chilean Pablo Neruda and Bengali Rabindranath Tagore with experimental Indian Classical music at the Southbank Centre. £15 / £12, 7.45pm

Eat, learn and be entertained as Book Slam and Cult Events team up to create School Dinners in Shoreditch. ‘Teachers’ include Joe Dunthorne, Hollie McNish and Chastity Butterworth. £50, 6.30pm

Roy McFarlane, Richard Tyrone Jones and Michael Brown join Amy Key, Jacqui Saphra and Gale Burns for The Shuffle at the Poetry Cafe. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Sunday 1 December

Stephen Watts and Cristina Viti are introduced by Dan Kennedy at Torriano Poets. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 2 December

Mitch Benn, Viv Groskop and Andri Snær Magnason fight it out in Literary Death Match at Kings Place, under judges Mark Billingham, Stephanie Merritt and Mike Wozniak. £9.50 / £11.50, 7pm

Nina Stibbe talks to Nick Hornby about her book of letters Love, Nina at Lutyens & Rubinstein. Price unlisted, but based on previous events we’re going with either £5 or £8, 7pm

Ivor Dembina presents Martin Millar, Dave McGowan, Tessa Ditner, Caspar Addyman and Miranda Miller at Brixton BookJam. Free, 7.30pm

Nadeem Aslam and Kamila Shamsie talk about the Pakistani novel today at Somerset House for the Royal Society of Literature. £8 / £5, 7pm

Erotic literary night Velvet Tongue has guests Ivor Dembina, Sunshine Faggio and Katie Sarra at Bar Kick in Shoreditch. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Exiled Writers Ink presents new work by exiled writers translated into English and English work into other languages, at the Poetry Cafe. £4 / £2, 7.30pm

George Szirtes, Deryn Rees-Jones and the 2013 Troubadour International Poetry Prize winners read at Coffee House Poetry. £8 / £7, 8pm

Tuesday 3 December

Have a three course lunch with Fay Weldon at Kaspar’s Seafood Bar and Grill at the Savoy. Email savoy@fairmont.com to book a table. £47 , 12pm

Simon Garfield (Just My Type, To the Letter) and Shaun Usher (Letters of Note) discuss letter writing at Keats House. Tickets from Daunt Books Hampstead £5, 7pm

Fay Robert, Rachel McCrum, Sophia Blackwell, Sophia Walker, Mel Jones, Julie Mullen and Cheryl Moskowitz perform poetry at The Tea Box in Richmond. £7, 8pm

Justine Picardie talks about Coco Chanel at West End Lane Books. Free, prebook, 7.30pm

Wednesday 4 December

Head to the Southbank Centre to see Daljit Nagra writing live, right in front of you. Free, 12-6pm

Patrick Coyle, Rebecca Lennon, Daniel Oliver and Candida Powell-Williams explore the crossover possibilities of performed words at the Southbank Centre. Free, prebook, 8pm

Phil Cohen discusses his involvement with radical movements of the 60s, at Housmans. £3, 7pm

Liz Bentley and Caroline Smith are Louche Women at the Poetry Cafe. 7.30pm

Dean Atta, Roger Robinson and Deanna Rodger perform alongside the voices of men in prison or from the local community at GROUNDation in Wandsworth. £7 / £5, 7pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Welcome to the recreation of Paul Cree’s first home away from home, a room at the Camden Lock Hotel transformed into a Brighton bedsit, strewn with comics and cassettes, decorated with caps and flyers.  In fact, come in, sit on the bed, have a cup of tea and a biscuit. Take off your shoes if you like. You need to kick back and relax to enjoy this extremely intimate, site-specific storytelling session.

He looks right at home, sat in the corner of the room for all the world like he’s 17 again, holding court with a bunch of mates but the performance of this autobiographical tale is carefully crafted. Given the bare bones of his story, not much happens. Boy leaves suburbia, dreams of making it in music, struggles with a supermarket job, inhabits a crappy bedsit, falls for a girl etc. But Cree is so likeable and his delivery so engaging that every turn the story takes is compelling. Lines regularly erupt in sweetly unexpected rhymes that conjure up vivid pictures. The pace changes, mixed up with the rhythms of drum ‘n’ bass and rap. His honesty and self-deprecating sense of humour are endearing and we particularly enjoyed his enthusiastic self-identification with obscure comic book hero, the Fool Killer.

This is a warm, funny and thoughtful show. Almost too warm in fact – it gets hot when 10 people cram into a bedsit. Make sure the window’s open.

A Tale from the Bedsit is just one of the creative spoken word shows you can see at the Roundhouse until Sunday and there are opportunities to catch new works in progress and take part in workshops and masterclasses. Read our preview here.

A Tale From The Bedsit is part of The Last Word festival at Roundhouse. Tickets £12.50, 16-25s £5. Catch it 28, 29, 30 November at 8pm or Sunday 1 December at 7.30pm (in the Studio Theatre – an accessible performance with many more seats than Room 101!) 

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 5 December

Atilla the Stockbroker, Phil Herbert and Cheryl McLennan are at Kentish Town Library for A Bookish Evening, raising money for C4WS Homeless Project. £5.95, 7.30pm

Celebrate Maureen Duffy at 80 with a full day of events at King’s College, featuring Anne Sebba, Maggie Gee, Alan Brownjohn, Ruth Fainlight and more. Free, prebook, 9.30am start

Daniel Rosenthal talks with Adrian Scarborough about the National Theatre and his new book on its 50 years, at Foyles. Free, prebook, 6.30pm

It’s the Bang Said the Gun Christmas Special, with Molly Naylor and all kinds of festive treats at the Roebuck. £7 / £5, 8pm

Faber hosts a Christmas party at its Bloomsbury office, with readings from Wendy Cope, Daljit Nagra and Clare Pollard. Plus mince pies and music. £8, 6.30pm

Take the kids to meet Lauren Child at Daunt Books Fulham Road. Free, 5pm

Dannie Abse reads from his latest collection, Speak, Old Parrot, at Waterstones Hampstead. £6 / £4, 7pm

Carlos Acosta and his editor Bill Swainson discuss the dancer’s novel Pig’s Foot, at the Bloomsbury Institute. £30 including book, 6.30pm

Justin Cartwright reads from Lion Heart at Waterstones Islington. £5 / £3, 6.30pm

Lionel Shriver reads at the Wapping Project. Go now before it’s taken over. £6, 7pm

Join in an open mic at the Poetry Cafe – sign up by 2.30pm. Free, 3pm

Stinky Bear Press brings poets including Sophie Mayer, James Wilkes, Camilla Nelson, Björn Brekkusnigill and more to Stoke Newington for Venus as a Bear, a night of Björk-ish poetry (geddit?!). Free, 7.30pm

Waterstones Piccadilly‘s annual Christmas author extravaganza is tonight, with Michael Rosen, The Gentle Author, Hadley Freeman, Simon Garfield, Mark Kermode and just tons more. From 6.30pm

Friday 6 December

This should be brilliant: Tongue Fu meets Anti Slam at Rich Mix, featuring Adam Kammerling, Kat Francois, Ross Sutherland, Dan Simpson, Chris Redmond, Nathan Penlington and more. £8 / £6, 8pm

Robert Hampson, Jean Portante and Zoe Skoulding read their poetry at Xing the Line in Clerkenwell. £10, 7.30pm

Ruth O’Callaghan presents Patricia Averbach, Jane Blank, Gillian Henchley and Ann Pilling at Lumen Poetry in Camden. No price given, but previous events were £5 / £4, 7pm

Isabel Greenberg talks about her new graphic novel, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, at Waterstones Covent Garden. Free, prebook, 6.30pm

Saturday 7 December

See Anthony Horowitz at St James Theatre talking about his Alex Rider novels. Book through Waterstones, £10 including goody bag, 11am

John Hegley hosts Elevenses at the Poetry Cafe with guests. £6 / £5, 11am

SW Zines hosts a Christmas social at Housmans. Free, bring a bottle, 7pm

Join writers, editors and publishers as they debate who are the gatekeepers of fiction publishing, in a Spread the Word event at the Free Word Centre. £20 / £10, 6pm

Go to Waterstones Chiswick from 4.30pm to meet local authors, with choirs and nibbles.

Sunday 8 December

Raymond Antrobus, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Burton Bradstock, Sh’maya and Roger Robinson join Jumoke Fashola, David Grant and Garth Crooks (yes, that Garth Crooks) for Jazz Verse Jukebox at Ronnie Scott’s. £8, 7.30pm

Eyewear poets Barbara Marsh, Caleb Klaces, Kate Noakes and Sheila Hillier are introduced by Todd Swift at Torriano Poets in Kentish Town. £5 / £3, 7.30pm

Monday 9 December

An exhibition featuring dedications found in second hand books starts today at Foyles and runs to 30 December. Free

Philip Hoare is the big draw at this month’s Polari at the Southbank Centre, but don’t knock Barbara Brownskirt and music from Marcus Reeves. £5, 7.45pm

AC Grayling talks about friendship at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. £10 / £12, 8pm

Tall Lighthouse publishing hosts an open mic night at the Poetry Cafe. Free, 7.30pm

Tuesday 10 December

Actors tell new stories of snow and stars at Liars League, but don’t expect it to be all twinkly: there are tales of anti-Fascist gardeners and Santa on a massive coke bender. Head to the Phoenix for free mince pies. £5, 7pm

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s weekly open mic night, Poetry Unplugged. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Wednesday 11 December

Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman sign copies of The 100 Most Pointless Arguments in the World at Waterstones Leadenhall Market. From 1pm, arrive early.

Agnes Meadow hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s night for women writers of all genres, Loose Muse. £5 / £3, 8pm

Stephen Grosz is among the guests at Waterstones Hampstead‘s authors evening from 6pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.

Author appearances, poetry and spoken word events in London this week

Thursday 12 December

There are late night shopping events with authors (Waterstones Gower Street, from 5.30pm) and mince pies (Foyles Charing Cross Road, from 6pm). Redstone Press also has a pop-up shop on Fournier Street until Christmas.

John Agard hosts London Liming at Rich Mix, with guests Lemn Sissay, Caroline Bird and Alexander D Great. £10 / £8, 7.30pm

Sara Hirsch, Grace Beadle, Tanya Loretta Dee, Catalina Ferro, Dudley Sutton and Mark Thornhill are confirmed guests at the Farrago Seasonal Slam in the RADA Foyer Bar, plus open mic. £6 / £5, 7.30pm

Seumas Milne talks about the battle for international political supremacy in the 21st century, at Housmans. £3, 7pm

Paul Bertill hosts a poetry open mic at Keats House. Free, 7pm

Zinovy Zinik, Andro Semeiko and Sally O’Reilly are at Waterstones Piccadilly. Free, prebook, 7pm

Students from Lilian Bayliss School in Lambeth perform with Deanna Rodger and Dean Atta at the Royal Society of Arts. 7.30pm

Friday 13 December

Dodo Modern Poets are at the Poetry Cafe with a theme of Winter Lights. Guests include Jenny Ridley, PR Murry, Lisa Hitchen and host Paul McGrane. £7 / £6, 8pm

Gale Burns hosts an evening of poetry, mince pies and candlelight upstairs at the Wheatsheaf in Fitzrovia, with Matt Bryden, Kim Campanello, Vahni Capildeo and more. £3, 7pm

Head to SOAS for a Re-Imagining Africa: Poetry Jam with Sifundo, Abadir Hashi, Mizan the Poet, Faisal Saleh, Ibrahim Sincere and Asha Mohammoud. £3, 5pm

Saturday 14 December

Take the kids (8 and above) to the Big Green Bookshop to hear author and storyteller Daniel Morden. Free, 3pm

Tom Huddleston is signing copies of The Waking World at Review in Peckham. From 2pm

David Amery combines poetry and maps at Epicentre in Leytonstone. Free, 7.30pm

Jeremy Reed and Itchy Ear bring their Ginger Light sonic poetry to the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury. £6, 7.30pm

Sunday 15 December

Chris Hadfield is signing copies of his book at Waterstones Piccadilly from 3pm, but arrive early.

Kat Francois hosts Word4Word Slam at Theatre Royal Stratford East with Tshaka Campbell and open mic. Free, 7pm

Monday 16 December

Daljit Nagra, Emily Berry and Maurice Riordan perform poetry at The Print Room in W2. £10, 7.30pm

Frances Kruk, Andy Spragg and Chris Stephenson read poetry at the Footsy Index in Farringdon. 7.30pm

Coffee House Poetry has a stormy weather theme on Old Brompton Road. £8 / £7, 8pm

Tuesday 17 December

Niall O’Sullivan hosts the Poetry Cafe‘s weekly open mic night, Poetry Unplugged. £5 / £4, 7.30pm

Alison Backenbury, Alfred Corn and John Greening are the guests at the Lumen Poetry Series in Tavistock Place. £5 / £4, 6.30pm

Thursday 19 December

There’s 10% off at the London Review Bookshop‘s customer evening: browse with mulled cider and sausages from 6.30pm. Waterstones Covent Garden also has an author evening, with Simon Garfield, The Gentle Author and more, from 6pm

Syrian writers Iyad Hayatleh, Maram al-Masri and Husam Eddin Mohammad are at the Poetry Cafe with Exiled Writers Ink. £4 / £2, 7.30pm

Sir Timothy Ackroyd performs A Christmas Carol at the Idler Academy. £15, 7.30pm

Bethany Pope’s Crown of Thorns is performed at the Poetry Cafe, followed by open mic. £5 / £4, 3pm

Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events.