Shakespeare and Company

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of America’s most acclaimed writers (who also happen to be married and parents to four children), take to our stage to discuss fiction, memoir, parenting, creativity and the overlap between them all.

Janine di Giovanni on The Morning They Came For Us by

We’re very excited to welcome one of the most electrifying contemporary French novelists Marie Darrieussecq to discuss her Prix-Medicis winning novel Men.

Our participation in the Festival Quartier du Livre continues with a night of poetry with two of the most powerful poets of the day, “the Pablo Neruda of North American poets” Martin Espada and New Zealand native Andrew Johnston.

For the final event in the Festival Quartier du Livre, we’re delighted to welcome back Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy to talk about her stunning new novel Hot Milk.

Join us as we celebrate the launch of Katy Masuga’s début novel The Origin of Vermilion.

We’re positively buzzing to be welcoming back two of our favourite poets, Jack Hirschman and Heather Hartley to read from, respectively,The Viet Arcane and Adult Swim. Very different in their poetic style, Jack and Heather are both known for the power and passion of their reading. Come for the poetry, stay for the party!

For this month's installment of the Art of Criticism we're delighted to welcome Edmund Gordon, lecturer in literature and creative writing at King's College London and a regular reviewer for a variety of UK publications including the Sunday Times, the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement. His authorised biography of Angela Carter will be published by Chatto & Windus in the UK, and Oxford University Press in the USA, this October. We'll be talking about the relationship between criticism and life-writing, and delving into the usual questions concerning the joys, and tribulations, of writing about other people's writing.

Where better to discuss Sartre, Beauvoir, Existentialism and apricot cocktails than Shakespeare and Company? And who better to converse with than Sarah Bakewell, author of the superb At The Existentialist Café.

We’re delighted to present Claire-Louise Bennett on her extraordinary and highly-praised debut collection, Pond (Fitzcarraldo Editions), currently shortlisted for the prestigious Dylan Thomas Prize.

To mark the forthcoming release of Don DeLillo’s astonishing Zero K, we’ve prepared this special edition of our podcast, recorded during his visit to the bookshop in February 2016. To hear the full version of the podcast visit our events archive at www.shakespeareandcompany.com

What is happiness? If anybody has the answer, it’s French philosopher Frédéric Lenoir, here tonight to discuss his best-selling investigation Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide, recently published in English.

We’re thrilled to welcome Granta Magazine to Shakespeare and Company to launch the 2016 spring issue, New Irish Writing. It is not only a celebration of Ireland’s exceptional writers but also a snapshot of where a rich and independent literary tradition is today. We have three of Ireland’s promising new generation with us, all of whom have original stories in the magazine, as well as Granta Magazine editor Sigrid Rausing. Why does a small nation of 4.5 million people dominate the international prize lists? Join us to find out.

It doesn’t take much to convince us to celebrate Shakespeare, so we couldn’t let the 400th anniversary of the bard shuffling off his mortal coil pass without raising a glass to the be-all and the end-all of English literature. Join Master of Ceremonies, author and journalist Alan Riding (Essential Shakespeare Handbook, And The Show Went On) along with a cast of actors and musicians, for an evening of songs, soliloquies, sonnets, sound and perhaps even a little fury. It will be such stuff as dreams are made on!

We’re delighted to celebrate the launch of Emma Beddington’s warm and witty memoir We’ll Always Have Paris, a book for anyone who has ever worn a Breton T­-shirt and wondered, however fleetingly, if they could pass for une vraie Parisienne.