Waterstones and Faber Members present: An evening with Max Porter

Best-selling author Max Porter will deliver a new and exclusive dramatic reading from his second novel Lanny in this special event - a partnership between Faber Members and Waterstones. In what promises to be a hugely atmospheric enactment of the text in the 'Poets' Church' St Giles-in-the-Field, the reading will be followed by a conversation with poet Rachael Allen and audience questions.

Max Porter

Max Porter's first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, won the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers' Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. It has been translated into twenty-seven languages. Max lives in Bath with his family.

Rachael Allen

Rachael Allen’s first collection of poems, KINGDOMLAND, is published by Faber & Faber. She is the co-author of a number of collaborative artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep with Marie Jacotey, published by Prototype, and Almost One. Say Again! with JocJonJosch, published by Slimvolume. She is the recipient of a Northern Writers Award and an Eric Gregory award. She hosts the Faber Poetry Podcast, is the poetry editor for Granta magazine and Granta books, and is currently an Anthony Burgess fellow at Manchester University.

Lanny

Not far from London, there is a village.

This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present.

It belongs to Mad Pete, the grizzled artist. To ancient Peggy, gossiping at her gate. To families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here.

But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.