From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce brings us a funny and perceptive escapist adventure novel that’s just what's needed for our troubled times. 1950 London. Schoolmarm Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job to pursue her childhood obsession: seek out the golden beetle of New Caledonia - that may or may not exist. When she advertises for an assistant to join her on an expedition, fun-loving Enid Pretty, in her unlikely pink travel suit and pom-pom ...
Jul 13, 2020•10 min
Right now, there are, according to the UNHCR, at least 25.9 million refugees in the world — the most ever recorded. Every single one of these people has a past and present. Every single one of these people deserves a future. Every single one of these people has a story and some of these feature in a bold new anthology called Imagine and Salon is sharing some of them in a special episode of our podcast. The Imagine Anthology is a publishing collaboration between Counterpoints Arts and Visual Edit...
Jun 19, 2020•43 min
We’re so thrilled to feature Douglas Stuart (an Observer debut novelist to watch for in 2020) as a Salon Exclusive! Enjoy the world premiere of Shuggie Bain, the unforgettable story of a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in the run-down public housing of Glasgow. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother, Agnes, walks a wayward path: she's Shuggie's guiding light but also a burde...
Jun 10, 2020•13 min
The incandescent John Niven treated us to a brilliant reading and at turns hilarious at turns terrifying conversation at our recent online Salon (relocated from the Savoy). The F*ck-it List is John's new satire, set in a near-future America that’s so horribly real it veers dangerously close to non-fiction. This America survived two terms of Donald and is now in the first term of Ivanka. Frank Brill, a small-town newspaper editor in a post-print world, lives in a world of Trumpian horror where th...
May 14, 2020•28 min
Polly Samson and family regaled us with exclusive readings and a Q and A at our very first live online Salon, relocated from the Savoy, attracting 50,000 viewers from around the world! Listen in as Polly and family read to us from her latest novel, 'A Theatre For Dreamers'. Set in 1960, the world is flirting with revolution and disaster and the Greek island of Hydra is a heady microcosm, home to a now-legendary circle of artists living messy tangled lives and all ruled over by writers Charmian C...
May 06, 2020•31 min
Listen in for the world premiere of Broken Greek from the brilliant journalist and broadcaster Pete Paphides (recorded at our very first online Salon, relocated from the Savoy). When Pete’s parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no money and only a little English. Everything changed. The Paphides family opened a fish-and-chip shop in Acocks Green - The Great Western Fish Bar is where Pete learned about banter and Britishness. And music—all the...
May 01, 2020•35 min
In celebration of its paperback release, Damian Barr gives an exclusive new reading for Salonistas from his debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here. The book is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories, exploring how the past influences the present and what choices we have - or not - in influencing our destiny. Listen in for news about the paperback - released in the UK April 2nd 2020 - and for a beautiful new reading from a particularly tender scene in the book. You Will Be...
Apr 01, 2020•13 min
Damian Barr reads his piece from this brand new collection edited by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp. Imagine A Country: Ideas for a Better Future offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Featuring Ali Smith, Alan Cumming, Kerry Hudson, Jackie Kay, Louise Welsh and many more. Royalties will be split among five Scottish charities: Shelter Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, Scottish Book Trust, Refuweegee and Reforestin...
Mar 21, 2020•8 min
We’re so excited about the much anticipated first adult fantasy novel from Eoin Colfer, the New York Times bestselling author of Artemis Fowl, and we're thrilled to feature him as a Salon Exclusive! Enjoy as Eoin treats us to an exclusive early sneak peek as he reads from Highfire, a joyous genre-bending story that’s part thriller, part action movie and very very funny. In it we meet a vodka-drinking, Netflix-bingeing dragon, who in the days of yore would fly the skies and scorch angry mobs, but...
Jan 26, 2020•16 min
Listen in for this exclusive interview and readings from the brilliant Maggie O’Farrell, who returned to the Salon to give us yet another world premiere with Hamnet, the novel she’s wanted to write for over thirty years. Maggie's first foray into historical fiction takes us back to a summer day in 1596. A young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, is distraught. Their mother, Agnes, is a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their f...
Dec 18, 2019•31 min
Welcome to the first instalment of Salon News! We've had so much excitement recently and so many people wanting to hear what we’ve got coming up, so we've answered your call. Listen in for all the goss on our TV series, how to get Salon tickets before anyone else in 2020, what we’ve been reading and a touch of naughtiness concerning Fanny Cradock’s doughnuts... Salon News - so much better than the real news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 11, 2019•11 min
Listen to Anthony Anaxagorou performing his beautiful poem ‘Things Already Lost’ especially for the Salon at the recent Cheltenham Literature Festival. Anthony is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Granta, and more, and has appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts. This poem is from his second collection After the Formalities, published...
Nov 01, 2019•2 min
Kerry Hudson attended nine primary schools and five secondaries living in B&B's and council flats as she and her mum were forced to move again and again by poverty. Now Kerry is a rightly acclaimed novelist, activist and columnist and her life is unrecognisable. But how did she get from there to here and is her journey complete? What of the places she left? Listen to her incredible conversation with Damian Barr and her readings from Lowborn, a memoir like no other and essential for our times...
Oct 30, 2019•31 min
Here at Salon we’re *so* excited about the debut novel from Okechukwu Nzelu and we're thrilled to feature him as a Salon Exclusive! Here he reads to us from 'The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney' - a very funny and bighearted story. In it we see Nnenna approaching womanhood, full of questions about how to ‘be’ when there’s so much she doesn’t know of her cultural and familial history, and we meet her mother Joanie, wondering how to love when she has never truly been loved. Their story is definitel...
Oct 09, 2019•14 min
Jojo Moyes - Literary Salon - July 2019 by Damian Barr's Literary Salon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 02, 2019•1 hr 6 min
Dustin Lance Black – who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk and helped overturn California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 – talks with Damian Barr at special Outsider Memoirs Salon at the Theatre Royal in Brighton. Dustin grew up in a conservative Mormon household in Texas. Here he reads t us from his inspiring memoir Mama's Boy, and discusses his childhood, his plucky mother, and much much more. Packed with passion, politics and humour, this is an episode not to be missed! And don’t...
Jul 03, 2019•1 hr 4 min
To read a memoir is to become part of somebody else’s story, to see yourself reflected in their pages. In a special Outsider Memoirs Salon at Brighton's Theatre Royal, Tracey Thorn joined us to share her latest memoir 'Another Planet'. We were taken to the scene of her 1970s childhood where ‘life was slow and very little happened, over and over again’ as her diary records. How did she get from there to Everything But The Girl? And don’t forget to check out our other podcast from the same night, ...
Jul 03, 2019•58 min
EXCLUSIVE - feast your ears on a never-heard-before podcast special from the Salon archives! Pour yourself a glass of wine and join us at Cheltenham Literature Festival 2017 with the brilliant Rachel Joyce. In this Book and A Bottle Salon, we enjoyed a joyously delicious hour of reading, wine-tasting and talking with the best-selling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Rachel read from her fourth novel The Music Shop, following record-shop owner Frank who can always find the very so...
May 24, 2019•1 hr 12 min
Damian Barr gives an exclusive reading for Salonistas from his debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here. The book is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories, exploring how the past influences the present and what choices we have - or not - in influencing our destiny. This reading is the final of three released across March. The book is available to preorder now at smarturl.it/m1t2vm and is published in the UK on 4th April and the USA on 14th May 2019. Learn more about your a...
Mar 21, 2019•7 min
Damian Barr gives an exclusive reading for Salonistas from his debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here. The book is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories, exploring how the past influences the present and what choices we have - or not - in influencing our destiny. This reading is the second of three being released across March. The book is available to preorder now at smarturl.it/m1t2vm and is published in the UK on 4th April and the USA on 14th May 2019. Learn more about...
Mar 14, 2019•8 min
Here at Salon we’ve long loved the risk-taking journalism of Saskia Vogel. So we’re delighted to feature her as a Salon Exclusive! Here she reads to us from her debut novel ‘Permission’ - a raw, fresh and very honest love story about dreams, expectations, and the erotic. And grief, yes grief too. When Echo’s father gets swept away by a freak current off the Los Angeles coast, she finds herself sinking into a complete state of paralysis. The book follows the failed young actress as she attempts t...
Mar 12, 2019•13 min
Damian Barr gives an exclusive reading for Salonistas from his debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here. The book is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories, exploring how the past influences the present and what choices we have - or not - in influencing our destiny. This reading is the first of three which will be released over the next few weeks. The book is available to preorder now at http://smarturl.it/m1t2vm and is published in the UK on 4th April and the USA on 14th M...
Mar 05, 2019•12 min
A special Oceania themed Literary Salon hosted by Damian Barr in the penthouse of New Zealand House to coincide with the major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Joining Damian for this special Salon are five leading voices from the Pacific...Māori writers Witi Ihimaera, Tina Makereti and Paula Morris and Pasifika poets David Egglegon and Karlo Mila, all of whom tell stunning Oceanic stories for the 21st century. Damian Barr, award-winning writer, journalist, presenter and salonnière is no...
Feb 17, 2019•1 hr 32 min
Damian in conversation with Maggie O'Farrell at the Edinburgh Book Festival. She reads from her astonishing memoir I am I am I am. It details her many and various brushes with death and her astonishing will to survive. A warning: someone fainted at the first reading. it's not gory but it is very intense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 17, 2019•53 min
So, here it is: the first ever reading from my first ever novel! Where else would I read it for the first time?! It's such a privilege to have all you Salonistas along with me on this journey. I am interviewed by Kirsty Wark - lucky me! The novel has already been previewed in the Guardian, Observer & Financial Times. Here is what the Big Issue had to say in their look ahead to 2019: 'Maggie and Me introduced the world to a startlingly clear and honest working class voice, but for his debut n...
Feb 17, 2019•41 min
Kirsty Wark has anchored Newsnight since 1993. She famously clashed with Margaret Thatcher and has interviewed every Prime Minister since - and probably also whoever it is that will be Prime Minister next month. She premiered her first novel, The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle, at the Salon almost exactly five years ago. Tonight, she returns to take us all to The House By The Loch –don’t let your American publishers change that to Lake. Wark’s second novel is set in Galloway- one the most beautiful...
Feb 17, 2019•25 min
World premiere of Sweet Sorrow, David's new novel, at the Savoy on Feb 11, 2019. Back in 2009, when we were at Shoreditch House, David Nicholls took to the stage – okay we didn’t have a stage, we had a stool - and made us all fall in love with Dexter and Emma. One Day went on to do quite well. Five years after that he took us all round Europe and to the breaking heart of a couple falling out of love in the middle of their midlife crisis. Five years later – and fresh from the searing Emmy-nominat...
Feb 17, 2019•33 min
A special Salon with the amazing and irrepressible Armistead Maupin at Brighton's Theatre Royal. Armistead treats us to excerpts from his new book 'Logical Family: A Memoir' before Damian takes the Tales of the City author on a fascinating jaunt down memory lane. Photo credit Christopher Turner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 30, 2019•1 hr 36 min
If you’re a fan of 'The Killing' you’re going to love 'The Chestnut Man' - the nail-biting debut novel from Søren Sveistrup, the BAFTA and Emmy winning creator of the global TV sensation . We're thrilled to have him reading an exclusive extract from it for us here, ahead of its UK release on 10th January 2019. It's every bit as gripping, terrifying and bloody as the TV show, so be warned! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 08, 2019•12 min
Rose McGowan was born into one cult, the Children of God, and came of age in another: Hollywood. She has been a Captive. A runaway. A starlet. A celebrity. A victim. And now she is an activist, an artist and a writer. Her powerfully honest memoir-manifesto is enraging and inspiring. Just over a year ago she helped sparked #metoo which continues to change our world. But what does it really take to be Brave? In this exceptionally far-reaching and revealing interview, Damian and Rose explore her be...
Nov 08, 2018•45 min
