LL185: Redacted - Brave New Words (In person)
As The London Library marks its 185th anniversary, we celebrate the endless ideas its million volumes can inspire, the serendipity of discovery within its stacks and the power of words and silence, with an event similarly dedicated to the endless possibilities of text and what can be found in the gaps.
From poet and playwright Inua Ellams, whose RAP Parties regularly sell out the Reading Room, comes Redacted, a live-literature gathering, celebrating play and invention, which centres blackout poetry, created when text is taken from a book, newspaper, or magazine and, by redacting words and entire sentences, hidden poetry is revealed. A stellar line-up of guest writers will create and perform their own black-out poetry from the same section of one of the most famous books to have been written at the Library, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Regularly named one of the greatest 100 novels of all time, it is also one of the most often banned, a dystopian classic which has turned out to be more prescient than anyone could have hoped. In this interactive blend of performance, conversation and revelation, our guests, alongside the audience, will turn the violence of literary censorship on its head and explore how meaning and beauty can found in the deliberate act of erasure. Host Inua Ellams will be joined by guests Shami Chakrabarti, Jenni Fagan, Luke Harding, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Barry Sadid and more tbc.
This is part of LL185, a series of events celebrating 185 years of The London Library as a home of inspiration, including talks, workshops and performances, delving into our history, collection and community and looking to the future. See our What’s On page for more information.
Shami Chakrabarti is a leading human rights lawyer and campaigner who has written and broadcast widely and held a number of public roles in recent decades. A legislator in the House of Lords, she is the author of On Liberty, Of Women and Human Rights: The Case for Defence. Director of Liberty (the National Council for Civil Liberties) from 2003 to 2016, she was Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020.
Inua Ellams is a Nigerian-born, UK-based poet, playwright and performer who has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the BBC. His latest play was an adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters set in Nigeria, staged at the National Theatre. The Actual, his fifth poetry release and first full collection, was published in 2020 by Penned in the Margins. He is an Ambassador of The London Library.
Jenni Fagan won the Gordon Burn Prize for her memoir, Ootlin, which was also longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. Her novels are The Panopticon, which saw her selected as a Granta Best Young British Novelist, The Sunlight Pilgrims, for which she was named Scottish Author of the Year and her latest dystopian fiction is The Delusions, published this year. She is a Doctor of Philosophy, a member of Liberty, and a Royal Society of Literature Fellow.
Luke Harding is an award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief. The Kremlin expelled him from the country in summer 2022 and put him on an official blacklist. He is the author of books including Mafia State, The Snowden Files, A Very Expensive Poison, Collusion and Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival.
Wayne Holloway-Smith is the author of two poetry collections, Alarum and Love Minus Love, which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and the Ledbury Munte Prize for Best Second Collection. His most recent book is a novella-length prose-poem, Rabbitbox, published this year. He won The Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2016 and The National Poetry Competition in 2018. He is Editor of The Poetry Review.
Barry Sadid is an Afghan-British writer, working on memory and oral history in an Afghan context. He was on The London Library Emerging Writers Programme from 2024-25.
Books by all speakers will be available to buy at the event and online from our partner bookshop Hatchards.
NB This event will take place in person at The London Library. Doors (and the bar) will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Please see our Event Access Guidelines before you arrive.
