[Culture] Kit De Waal, Balsam Karam, Philippe Marczewski: Writers Salon

Kit De Waal, Balsam Karam, Philippe Marczewski

Literary Salon | Sat 13th Sep | 6.30-8.30pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speakers will start at 7pm.

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European Writers Salon and Full Circle are delighted to bring you an evening with three fantastic writers from across Europe as they explore what roots them and unroots them and the role that literature and writing play in allowing us to find and create a sense of home in a changing world. 

Kit de Waal, Balsam Karam and Philippe Marczewski will each read from their work and talk about what Rooted/Unrooted means to them. This will then be followed by a lively panel discussion and audience questions. 

Join us for a stimulating and creative evening as we think about what being a European writer means today and to us, how literature sustains us and how we can create and re-create rootedness in our own ways – building a community based on love of literature and connection. 

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ABOUT THE WRITERS

Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the ‘60s and ‘70s. She is the bestselling, prize-winning author of novels My Name Is Leon (an international bestseller which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was recently adapted as a film for BBC Two), The Trick to Time (longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction), a short story collection, Supporting Cast, and a memoir, Without Warning and Only Sometimes (which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the Irish Book Awards). She is also editor of the Common People anthology, and co-founder of the Big Book Weekend festival. Her latest book Best of Everything is a redemptive novel about the love that can steal into our lives, in spite of the best laid plans.

Balsam Karam is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a young child. She made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed novel Event Horizon, which was shortlisted for the Katapult Prize and won the Småland Literature Festival’s Migrant Prize. Her second novel, The Singularity, was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature, the August Prize, and Svenska Dagbladet’s Literature Prize.

Philippe Marczewski is a Belgian writer. He worked in neuropsychology before setting up an independent bookshop, which he ran for sixteen years. He is author of Blues pour trois tombes et un fantôme, a melancholy tale exploring the moods generated by his home town of Liège, and Un corps tropical, a caustic contemporary adventure novel (Prix Victor Rossel, Special Mention of the Jury of the Prix Senghor). Quand Cécile, which evokes absence, mourning, memory and forgetting without sadness, was awarded special mention by the 2025 European Union Prize for Literature.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Large (70-100)	Available on request