This event will form part of Curzon’s ENTHUSIASMS strand, is hosted by the curators and agency-for-change Birds’ Eye View and involves a screening on 35mm, an onstage discussion and then a book signing afterwards.
Today’s special guest is the twice-Booker nominated author Deborah Levy. She will be reading from her latest work THE COST OF LIVING, and discussing the links between the film, the source novel and her own work/life. She will be joined by the cultural historian and writer Lara Feigel who will be connecting her most recent book FREE WOMAN that’s part memoir, part biography of Doris Lessing. Both will be signing their latest books afterwards.
It was obvious that femininity, as written by men and performed by women, was the exhausted phantom that still haunted the twenty-first century. She is a very tricky character to play and it is a role (sacrifice, endurance, cheerful suffering) that has made some women go mad. This was not a story I wanted to hear all over again. It was time to find new major female characters with other talents. Deborah Levy . THE COST OF LIVING
Deborah Levy is a British playwright, novelist and poet. Her 2011 novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize. Hot Milk, her sixth novel, was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, in 2016. Deborah is also the author of a collection of short stories, Black Vodka (2013), which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC. Her latest work The Cost of Living is the second installment of her ‘living autobiography’ series. The first installment was the acclaimed Things I Don’t Want to Know. She has also written for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC.
Lara Feigel is an author, literary critic and cultural historian teaching in the English department at King’s College London. She is fascinated by the relationship between life, literature and history and in her books attempts to find new ways of writing that can allow the three to intertwine. Her most recent book Free Woman is an investigation of freedom that’s part memoir and part biography of Doris Lessing. She interweaves life and literature to think about motherhood, sex, madness and communism, testing the gains and costs of living freely.
