Friday May 17th, 5PM, Project Room, 50 George Square, 1.06. A reception will follow. The inaugural LLC-based annual JTB Awards event. We will celebrate this year’s James Tait Black Prizes in Fiction and Biography, discussing the year’s shortlisted writers and winners, and hearing from some of our brilliant student readers. We will be joined by […]

Thursday 16 May, 2024, 10:00-12:00 noon, 50 George Square, Room 3.39.

7.00-8.15pm, Tuesday 17 October, 2023, Edinburgh College of Art, West Court. Hosted by the UNESCO Week of Sound in collaboration with the James Tait Black Visiting Writers Programme and the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures Amit Chaudhuri will be performing compositions from a celebrated musical-conceptual project he started as a composer, vocalist, and improviser […]

Monday 9 October, 2.10-4pm, 2023, Teaching Room, Centre for Research Collections, 6th Floor of the University Main Library. As part of the James Tait Black Visiting Writer Programme, we are delighted that Amit Chaudhuri will speak to today’s Reading Group in person. Readings: Amit Chaudhuri, “I Am Ramu” (pdf can be provided), and Annie Ernaux, trans. Alison L. Strayer, The Young […]

5.00-6.00pm, Friday 6 October, 2023, 50 George Square, Lecture Theatre G.03. Followed by Reception from 7.00pm (sponsored by NYRB) – A James Tait Black Prize Visiting Writer Event. A conversation with Amit Chaudhuri, winner of the 2022 James Tait Black Prize in Biography for Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (NYRB/Faber), celebrating the […]

2.10-4.00pm, Weds 4 October, 2023, 24 Buccleuch Place, 1.04. Amit Chaudhuri Masterclass: ‘Give Nothing Centrality’ – A James Tait Black Visiting Writers Event. Limited to 15 students, postgraduates, and/or doctoral researchers. Participants will be asked to read a number of short extracts, circulated in advance, from Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’, Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, and Woolf’s ‘Mr […]

Wednesday, 8 March, 2023, at 4:30pm in 40GS, Room #LG11. In his Baillie Gifford Prize-winning Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery, Alex Renton goes on a disturbing journey through his family archive, which yields up a horrific—yet not uncommon—story about his Fergusson ancestors’ involvement in Caribbean plantations where they owned, bought, and […]

Monday 13 February, 2023, 5:00-6:00pm, with reception to follow. G.01, ground floor, 50 George Square. A conversation on writing lives with the brilliant biographer and critic Frances Wilson. Frances Wilson has written exhilarating biographies, as daring as they are elegant, with remarkable historical range, which all raise questions and shape new possibilities for the forms of life-writing. In […]

Friday 17 February, 2023, 10.00-11.30am, Project Room, first floor, 50 George Square. Launching the James Tait Black Memorual Prize Visiting Writers Programme, an opportunity to participate in a masterclass with the renowned biographer, critic and literary artist Frances Wilson, discussing her work towards a new biography of Muriel Spark. Limited to 16 students, postgraduates, and/or doctoral […]

Thursday, 8 December, 2022, 4.00-5.00pm, in the Centre for Research Collections Seminar Room, 6th floor, University of Edinburgh Main Library. A one-hour Edinburgh Life-Writing Network research-in-progress panel, proposed and with presentations by Edinburgh doctoral researchers and James Tait Black Biography Prize readers, Aiswarya Jayamohan and Maxime Geervliet, followed by discussion. Aiswarya Jayamohan: “stupid and gauche […]