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.