On 9 February, Silver Press is participating in a day around writing and imagining worlds at the Barbican Centre.
Writing Worlds: A panel discussion
Sun 9 Feb 2025, 2.30pm, Frobisher Auditorium 1
What is it to make a world – and why is storytelling important? How do writers and artists make worlds and imagine new possibilities? At this talk, chaired by Susanna Davies-Crook, we explore feminist, queer and speculative strategies for envisioning how we might re-make our world through storytelling, gaming and worldbuilding. The panel discusses Steering the Craft – Ursula K. Le Guin’s carrier bag of the tools of a writer’s craft: how, and why, to write – and the surrealist dream worlds of Leonora Carrington and Chloe Aridjis. Sammy Lee and Sarah Shin will also present an overview of their mythical game world, Mirror: The Mountain. With non-linear storytelling inspired by the archetypes of tarot, the game delves into themes of memory, mythology, and the entanglement of mind and cosmos.
Book tickets here. A ticket to this event also gives you access to the Barbican Conservatory Takeover Imagining Worlds: a day of pop-up readings, live events and workshops, nestled among the plants in the living, breathing conservatory.
Sun 9 Feb 2025, 12pm-2pm, Barbican Conservatory
What ignites your imagination? How does the desire to create manifest itself? We invite writers, readers, collectives and artists to come together and think through in workshops, worldbuilding and speculative fiction. The day will explore how coming together in creativity through words and imaginations give us a sense of meaning, belonging and community.
The Feminist Duration Reading Group in collaboration with Silver Press hosts a session of out loud readings inspired by shape-shifting and transformation, across time and space, gender and species. Inspiration comes from Afrofuturist writer Octavia E. Butler who wrote, in 1999, “I never bought into my invisibility or non-existence as a Black person. As a female and as an African American, I wrote myself into the world. I wrote myself into the present, the future, and the past.”
Out loud readings will be held nestled among the plants in the Barbican’s living, breathing conservatory. Moments of pause and guided reflection will intersperse collective readings. There is no need to prepare in advance. Readings will be circulated on the day.
Shape-shifting and transformation, the fluidity of identity, materiality, and history, will be evoked through texts of speculative and science fiction, poetry and scores. Writers include Clay AD, Octavia E. Butler, Larissa Lai, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Naomi Okabe, Pauline Oliveros, and Sofia Samatar.
This is a free event but with limited space. You can book a place here.
Nikita Gill, Ariana Reines, So Mayer, and Big Dyke Bookclub hosted by Sophie Crawford, will also be reading throughout the day. See the full programme here.
Accessibility: Seating at this event is limited and some audience members will be required to stand during readings.