English PEN events: China Mieville, Alexander Goehr and more

Time is running short to book for English PEN’s October events. Tuesday 12 will see award-winning sci-fi author China Mieville visit the Free Word Centre to discuss his life as an author. The following evening, Wednesday 13, King’s College London will host Promised End, a special event in which composer Alexander Goehr, Hermione Lee and Dennis Marks will be discussing the collaboration between Goehr and the late Frank Kermode, and their adventures in setting Shakespeare to music. If you’re free tomorrow evening, there are still a few tickets left for Even Silence Has An End, where former Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt will be in conversation with John McCarthy. If you’d like to attend these exciting events, book now!

Coming up later this month are the Burmese Arts Festival and Breaking the Language Barrier: Festivals in Translation. Check out these events, plus the rest of our Autumn season, on our website.

Ingrid Betancourt: Even Silence Has An End

Wednesday 6 October, 7.45pm

Congress Hall, Congress Centre, 28 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3LS

In association with Waterstones, Virago and The Guardian

Held hostage In the depths of the Colombian jungle for six and half years before being freed in a dramatic rescue in 2008, Ingrid Bentancourt's deeply moving story captured the world's imagination. This is the exclusive UK event for the Nobel Peace Prize nominee and her extraordinary autobiography, Even Silence Has An End.

Tickets are available from Waterstones Economists' Bookshop, LSE, Portugal Street, London, WC2A 2AB, or on 020 7405 5531.

The Author & The Author: China Mieville

Tuesday 12 October, 6.30pm

Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA

£8/£5 PEN members

China Mieville is one of the most acclaimed science fiction writers of his generation. In 2010, The City & The City became the third novel by him to win the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction, and his other books and stories have won an array of prizes. How did Mieville - who is also active in academia and politics - find his way into writing science fiction? Is his writing constrained or liberated by his choice of genre? And what does it mean for him to be an 'Author', at a time when the publishing market is changing rapidly and the idea of literary free speech is under intense scrutiny? In conversation with Jonathan Heawood, Mieville explores the joys and tensions of authorship.

Book online now or call 020 7324 2535

Promised End

Wednesday 13 October, 6.30pm

Safra Lecture Theatre, Strand Campus, King's College, London, WC2R 2LS

FREE- booking essential

Verdi created Otello. Britten composed A Midsummer Night's Dream. Both of them contemplated setting King Lear but barely a note made it as far as the manuscript paper. The British composer Alexander Goehr collaborated with the late scholar and critic Frank Kermode on a dramatic meditation on Shakespeare's masterpiece under the title Promised End. In this very special event to coincide with the world premiere of Promised End at the Royal Opera House, broadcaster and writer Dennis Marks explores with Goehr and the writer and academic Hermione Lee the challenges of transforming Shakespeare into music drama.

Book online now or call 020 7324 2535