An Eye for Life: Ali Smith and Marion Coutts in Conversation, LSE Literary Festival & Royal Society of Literature

Costa Prize winner Ali Smith talks to artist Marion Coutts about the line between art and literature, life and fiction. Following her husband’s diagnosis of a brain tumour, Marion Coutts’ life split in two; ‘before’, and ‘after’ - which she wrote about in her memoir, The Iceberg. Ali Smith’s How to be Both is a novel of two halves - literally. It links together the life of a fresco painter in the 1460s and a schoolgirl in the 1960s, and its two sections can be read in either order.
The LSE Literary Fetsival: book events and writers' talks, London
120 years ago, playwright, socialist and Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw co-founded the London School of Economics. Seven years ago, the university held its first Literary Festival, which this year takes on ‘foundations’ as its timely theme. Over one week, Elif Shafak, Anne Fine, Ali Smith, Will Self and a heap of other great minds will celebrate Shaw’s inquisitiveness by delving into ‘the causes of things’, which remains the university’s motto to this day. They’ll take some topics we think we understand - such as freedom, identity, politics and memory - and show us that we don’t know quite as much as we think…