Welcome to the only website listing all London’s book talks and literary theatre productions, aggregated from 90 bookshops, libraries, academic institutions and arts venues, and from 80 theatres.
You can subscribe for a free email every Thursday, containing the following seven days of book talk listings.
To access the full listings for the following three months, you can buy a subscription for £40 a year or £4 a month. If you pay annually, that’s 77p a week for a comprehensive view of London’s literary scene. Make sure to subscribe when you’re on desktop, rather than the Substack mobile app - on the latter, your mobile operating system (likely Apple or Google) will add a 15-30% surcharge.
If you do not have a Substack account and/or would like to pay me directly by bank transfer, email literarylistingslondon@gmail.com
Both free and paid subscribers also receive intermittent issues of Literary Backlistings, a series in which I recommend remarkable books and other literary goings-on. If you want to receive only the weekly book talk listings, go to Settings, Publications, Literary Listings London and toggle ‘Literary Backlistings’ off (instructions here). If you want to receive only Literary Backlistings, toggle all the other sections off.
How it works
The events are listed under each day in the following order: fairs, festivals and conferences; fiction; non-fiction; academia; poetry; journals and magazines.
If the weekly email is too long for your inbox, you may find it easier to read the online post (reached by clicking the headline of each email, ‘All London book talks’). If you check the listings during the week, I recommend checking the online post rather than the email, because occasionally I add events in the coming days but I can only update the post, not the email you have already received.
There is a permanent rolling list on the homepage of upcoming book talks here and upcoming literary theatre here. There is a filtered list of Shakespeare productions here.
You will also find rolling lists filtering book talks by subject: history and politics; poetry; LGBTQ+.
I run an ongoing series of ‘10 Questions’ interviews with authors who have an event coming up.
I started this page because I was fed up of one not existing. London has an unrivalled literary scene, and yet it was hard to keep up with what was on, and I was often missing events or not getting a ticket before they sold out. Writing is solitary, and spending an evening in the company of readers and authors can be stimulating and uplifting.
Let me know if you find it useful, and please share with anyone else who might. If you run an event, send details to literarylistingslondon@gmail.com
Charlotte
