Hearing the Voice has partnered with New Writing North to produce a series of literary and cultural events at this year’s Durham Book Festival. This collaboration was made
possible by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) cultural engagement postdoctoral position held by William Viney. We would like to thank the AHRC for their support.
The Debate: Is great science great science fiction?
Wednesday 9th October
8.30pm (2hrs)
Durham Castle
Tickets are free but please pre-book.
From ‘God particles’ to embryonic stem-cell research, our scientific discoveries are saturated with wonder and the downright weird. But do we create scientific facts or do scientists simply discover what’s already there? Join Professor Tom McLeish (molecular physicist), Professor Patricia Waugh (English studies), Ken MacLeod (science fiction writer) and Dr Andrew Crumey (novelist and former physicist) for this book festival curtain raiser.
Produced in association with the Institute of Advanced Study and Hearing the Voice.
Saturday 12 October
7 pm – 8.30 pm
St Chad’s College Chapel
Tickets: £8/£6 (includes glass of wine and a copy of the magazine)
From William Blake to Hilary Mantel, the phenomenon of hearing a voice that no one else can hear has been frequently associated with creativity. We explore this tradition in our political and social moment, by launching a collection of ten works on the idea of voice-hearing and walking in cities. Iain Sinclair, renowned writer, author of American Smoke, and pioneer of British psychogeography, will read his contribution to the collection. Chaired by Dr Angela Woods, co-director of the Hearing the Voice project.
Produced in association with StepAway Magazine and Hearing the Voice.
Voices, Memory , Forgetting
Saturday 19 October
St Chad’s College Chapel
These three events form a unique day-long conversation at St Chad’s College Chapel about memory, creativity and mental health led by some of the UK’s leading journalists, writers and psychologists, in collaboration with The Memory Network and the Hearing the Voice project.
Hearing Voices, Returning Memories
11am-12.30pm
Tickets: £3
This panel event brings together Eleanor Longden, psychologist and leading figure in the global voice-hearing movement, Dr Lisa Blackman, author of Immaterial Bodies: Affect, Embodiment, Mediation, and Professor Richard Bentall, author of Doctoring the Mind. Chaired by Dr Angela Woods.
Carolyn Jess-Cooke: The Boy Who Could See Demons
2pm-3pm
Tickets: £3
Carolyn Jess-Cooke, author of The Boy Who Could See Demons and The Guardian Angel’s Journal, talks to Professor Pat Waugh, one of the UK’s leading literary theorists, about how her work engages with themes including memories and hallucination.
Will Storr in Conversation with Charles Fernyhough
3.30pm-4.30pm
Tickets: £3
Will Storr is a journalist who has written for The Times and The Observer. His book, The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, explores how the stories we tell ourselves about the world shape our beliefs and why today’s heretics don’t believe the facts. Will will be in conversation with Professor Charles Fernyhough, psychologist and author of the award-winning Pieces of Light and neuroscience thriller A Box of Birds.
For more information, please download the 2013 Durham Book Festival programme. To book tickets for the above events, please call the Gala Theatre on 03000 266 600 or visit the Gala website.
