Will Self

Why Read to be published in November

A new collection of Will’s non-fiction writing (following on from Junk Mail and Feeding Frenzy), Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, is published by Grove Press in the UK on November 3, and by Grove Atlantic in the US on January 17 2023 – a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

“Sharp, trenchant essays from an enfant terrible of modern letters…. Self effortlessly weaves his way from such lighthearted topics as shelves, the “very lynchpins of a form of bourgeois domesticity,” to a lengthy, dark, autobiographical piece on W.G. Sebald and the role of the Holocaust in his writing as well as an unfortunately timely piece about his visit to “coruscating” Pripyat, near Chernobyl, at the same time as the Fukushima disaster. …Plenty to ponder in this energetic, opinionated collection.” – Kirkus Reviews (for full review go here).

Why Read events:
Falmouth Book Festival, October 22
How To event at the Art Workers Guild in London, November 7
Blackwell’s Oxford, November 10
Brighthelm Centre, Brighton, November 11
Folkestone Festival, November 26

Arvon Live Writing Day: Writing about place

Join Will for two Masterclasses delivered live and in-person at the Arvon Live Writing Day this Sunday from 9.30am at Hebden Bridge Town Hall. Will and Amy Liptrot will share some of their own methods of exploring an area – on foot, in words – and give you a chance to try them out. Do places have their own voices? Do they carry memories? How can we as writers tune into and translate them? You will consider what makes successful place writing as well as what makes you an individual.

There will be opportunities to be inspired by the landscape of Hebden Bridge and the Calder Valley as well as places from your own experience and imagination: town or city, island or forest, kitchen or carpark, map or cloud.

For more details and booking, visit the Arvon website.

Ports Fest evening

Will is going to be exploring the ways we remember the fiction we read in our youth, the role of memory, and our views of facticity at Ports Fest in Portsmouth on Thursday 30 June from 7.30pm till 9.20pm. He will also read from his latest book, Will: A Memoir. For tickets, go here.

Roughler Club, west London

Will is going to be performing as part of the line-up at the Roughler Club at the Playground Theatre, Latimer Road London W10 6RQ on Thursday June 2 from 7pm, a showcase for established and emerging artists of acoustic music, poetry and story telling. For more details and to buy tickets, visit the Playground Theatre website.

Poetry Shack appearance

Will is going to be performing at The Poetry Shack at the Candid Arts Centre in London at 7pm on 31 May, along with Stewart Home and others. To book tickets, visit candidartslondon.com.

Celebrating 100 years of Eliot’s The Waste Land

Will is going to be in conversation with Steven Gale at the fragments festival in London on Sunday April 10, celebrating 100 years of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. “These will be short, 15-minute events in 22 of London’s most beautiful churches. It takes place in the City of London in the actual geography of the poem’s setting and where Eliot worked at Lloyds Bank when writing the poem.” Here’s the full programme.

Will is going to discuss the Modernist approach, the inheritors of Eliot, and the fraught relationship between content and form.

Lincoln Book Festival

Will is going to be talking to Dr Guy Mankowski about his latest book, Will, and ‘whether it captures the diversity of his life or, as suggested in the Daily Telegraph, is “Just another Selfian character, subject to absolute authorial control, the fragmented derangement of his youth woven into an intricate and coherent whole by the mature author”‘ at the Lincoln Book Festival on 14 October at 6.30pm. Tickets cost £10 and can be bought here.

Ports Fest July 3

Tickets are available for Will’s talk and Q&A this Saturday online at 2-3.30pm at Ports Fest. The talk “will explore ways in which we remember the fiction we read during childhood and youth, the role of memory, and our views of facticity” and Will will also read from his latest book, Will: A Memoir.

About / Contact

will-self.com is the official website for British novelist and journalist Will Self. The site is managed by Chris Hall and Chris Mitchell.

If you want to get in touch, you can email us at info@will-self.com

All email will be read, but we can’t guarantee a response.

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If you have a specific request for Will regarding commissions, book rights etc, you can contact his agent via agent@will-self.com

Will’s Writing Room

Will's Writing Room
– a 360 degree view in 71 photos

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