2025 Online Events
This Must Be The Place: John Grindrod and Simon Phipps
Wednesday 29 January 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £6/£4
Join architectural photographer Simon Phipps and writer John Grindrod as they take us on a tour of some of the amazing modern places in Britain that Simon has captured in his acclaimed books, including Brutal London and Brutal North.
At A Loss: Grief Writing Workshop with James McDermott
Wednesday 5 February 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 9.00pm; £20/£15
Join us for an inclusive, interactive two-hour workshop with playwright, screenwriter and poet James McDermott, where writers will learn tools and techniques to help them re-see loss, and explore innovative and inventive approaches to writing.
Literature and Offence: Mark Rosenblatt with Monika Smialkowska
Monday 10 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
Is theatre still the ideal venue for exploring challenging, complex and even potentially offensive topics? Dr Monika Smialkowska discusses these issues with Mark Rosenblatt, author of the new play Giant, a fictionalised account of the circumstances leading up to an interview that Roald Dahl gave in which he expressed a series of explicitly antisemitic opinions.
The Age of the Algorithm: Julia Bell with Philip Seargeant
Monday 17 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
Writer and creative writing lecturer Julia Bell talks to the OU’s Philip Seargeant about how the implementation of AI impacts writers’ freedom of expression, covering topics from augmented writing applications’ influence on style and content to ways that techno-capitalism exploits and monetises human behaviour.
Historical Cancel Culture: Charlotte Gordon with Jupiter Jones
Monday 24 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
Charlotte Gordon, author of Radical Outlaws, talks to Jupiter Jones about the eighteenth-century writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and how, after her untimely death, Wollstonecraft was effectively ‘cancelled’, due largely to the publication of a scandalous tell-all memoir.
Translation and Censorship: Sawad Hussain/Monica Cure w Daria Chernysheva
Monday 31 March 2025, Zoom, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £PayWhatYouCan
In this event, we explore literature in translation with a specific focus on censorship and free speech through the lens of two novels that both address these concerns: Liliana Corobca’s The Censor’s Notebook and Bothayna al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library.
Free Speech and the Politics of Literature - Panel Event
Friday 11 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 6.00pm - 7.00pm; £10/£7/£Free
Literature has always been on the front line in debates about free speech – and never more so than today. Join a panel of writers (Aki Schilz, Henry Porter, Sabrina Mahfouz and Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill) whose distinct experiences and expertise on the issue of freedom of expression can help make sense of our paradoxical times.
Edward Stourton: Confessions with Rob Gifford
Wednesday 9 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 7.00pm; £10/£7/£5
One of British broadcasting’s best-known names reflects on his life against the context of a world that has changed dramatically during his forty-year career. As, of course, has Edward Stourton, who - in conversation with Rob Gifford - shares his remarkable journey with his familiar candour, humour and insight.
Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time with Eley Williams (livestream)
Friday 11 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £10/£7/£5
In Kaliane Bradley’s astonishing debut novel, The Ministry of Time, a mysterious government ministry gathers ‘expats’ from history to test the limits of time travel. In this fabulous fusion of genre and ideas, she asks how you can defy history when history is living in your house?
Raising Voices: A Chorus of Local Writers (in-person or livestream)
Saturday 12 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, 5.00pm - 6.30pm; Free (donations welcome)
Tales from the city, from green spaces, from home. From Midsummer, Midwinter, Lammas, the future, the past and more... Join us for a medley of readings chosen from our #MinK anthologies and online events that celebrate the depth and quality of the local writing shared over the last eight festival years.
Mark Billingham: The Wrong Hands with Sarah Pinborough (livestream)
Saturday 12 April 2025, Waterstones Midsummer Place, Milton Keynes, 7.30pm - 8.30pm; £10/£7/£5
Multi-bestselling Mark Billingham – one of our most acclaimed and popular crime writers – brings his brilliant, twisty new detective novel The Wrong Hands to MK, in conversation with internationally bestselling author Sarah Pinborough. Join us for a criminally entertaining festival finale!
Dreams for Beltane: celebrating the First of May
Thursday 1 May 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £3/£2 (selected writers enter free)
Whether you celebrate ancient pagan ritual, International Labour Day or any of the other anniversaries that 1 May marks, submit your poetry, flash fiction or creative non-fiction for our online event, Dreams for Beltane. Entries closed on 12 April 2025.
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An Evening with Andrey Kurkov: The Literature and Politics of Ukraine
Wednesday 11 June 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £8/6
Ukrainian novelist and author of the international bestseller Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov, is an ambassador for his country’s literature, culture, identity and independence. Now writing and commenting at the forefront of a 21st-century war, he shares his insights into the intersection of literature, politics, and language.
Look Again: The surprises of inner and outer landscapes (Masterclass)
Wednesday 2 July 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.30pm; £15/£12
Whatever their form, all stories take place somewhere. Join Belfast-born fiction writer Paul McVeigh and Coventry-born poet Cathy Galvin for this short story masterclass, as they invite you to disrupt your usual writing practice and find a space to look again, and more deeply, at the all-too-familiar landscape of home.
You and Me: local writers mark International Day of Friendship
Wednesday 30 July 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £3/£2 (selected writers enter free)
Friendship is one of the foundations of human experience. Young or old, male or female, single or married, straight or otherwise, our friends are a source of joy, comfort, support - and sometimes otherwise! Join us to hear our favourite submissions on the theme from local writers as we amiably mark International Day of Friendship.
Digging in the Dirt: Adventures in Ecopoetry (Masterclass)
Tuesday 5 August 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.30pm; £15/£12
In partnership with Poets for the Planet, a masterclass in writing about place and location with the acclaimed ecopoets Clare Shaw, Rishi Dastidar, Caleb Parkin and Jessica Mookherjee. Profits will be donated to Give Peat a Chance, and poems can be submitted later to Poets for the Planet and to our Raising Voices project.
Writing 'Place': A Creative Location-Based Non-Fiction Masterclass
Wednesday 16 October 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.30pm; £15/£12
Let's transform place into story. In this 90-minute masterclass, we’ll explore creative non-fiction techniques, from personal memory to Gonzo, to hidden histories. Through readings, discussion, and writing prompts, we focus on capturing the atmosphere, detail, and social context, to make locations come alive on the page.
Letters and Literature: Karen McCarthy Woolf in conversation with Jane Yeh
Friday 7 November 2025, MS Teams, 6.00pm - 7.00pm; £Free
Acclaimed poet and novelist Karen McCarthy Woolf talks to Open University lecturer Jane Yeh about the role of letters in Woolf’s experimental verse novel Top Doll – a joyfully irreverent tale of a real-life American heiress narrated by her vast collection of antique dolls – and in Woolf’s other work.
Letters and Literature: Sigrid Nunez in conversation with Emma Claire Sweeney
Friday 7 November 2025, MS Teams, 8.00pm - 9.00pm; £Free
Sigrid Nunez, one of the USA’s most esteemed and best-selling authors, talks to Open University novelist Emma Claire Sweeney about the letters of her literary lodestar, Virginia Woolf, and those of her one time mentor, Susan Sontag, revealing the roles they played in the writing of two of Nunez’s own books.
Poetry Spotlight: Zoe Brooks and Anna Saunders
Wed 12 November 2025, Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.00pm; £5/£3
Zoe Brooks and Anna Saunders aren’t just the driving forces behind Cheltenham Poetry Festival: they’re compelling poets in their own right. They read for us from their latest and forthcoming collections, along with Leo Boix, Julia Webb and Lesley Sharpe.
Tories: The End of an Error - Russell Jones in conversation with Rob Gifford
Wednesday 26 Nov 2025, Waterstones mk/Zoom, 7.00pm - 8.30pm; £10/7 (inperson), £8/6 online)
Tories: The End of an Error is the final volume in Russell Jones’ satirical trilogy that has catalogued fourteen years of the Torygeddon circus, diving into the plastic managerialism of Rishi Sunak's rollercoaster gap-year in office. Russell will once more be in conversation with Rob Gifford.
The Raising Voices StoryMap Launch Party
Tuesday 9 December, The Box Arts Club/Online, from 7.00pm; £ Donations welcome
Join us in-person or online for a special end of year celebration event, as we officially launch the Raising Voices StoryMap - an interactive, online audio-visual map of poems and stories inspired by the city. Submit new writing by 17 November and you could also be taking part.