Friday 8th September
6.30 pm at The Leeds Library.
Most of what we say about books is really about the words inside them: the rosy nostalgic glow for childhood reading, the lifetime companionship of a much-loved novel. But books are things as well as words, objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines, loosen their leaves and write in their margins, so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are, as Stephen King put it, ‘a uniquely portable magic’.
Join us for an entertaining evening with Leeds lass, Emma Smith as she introduces her most recent book, Portable Magic, which illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal – and more turbulent – than we tend to imagine.
Emma Smith was born and brought up in Leeds, went unexpectedly to university in Oxford, and never really left! She is now Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College and the author of the Sunday Times bestseller ‘This is Shakespeare’. Copies of Portable Magic will be available to purchase and be signed by the author at the event.
This is a Pay What You Decide event.