Literary Festival 2016: Re-Writing the Past vs Imagining the Future

Spring 2016 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Miriam Halahmy, Philip Womack, M M Vaughan | In this discussion aimed at young adults (or adults who are young at heart), our panel of critically acclaimed YA authors will discuss how they recreate historical events or invent future ones in their writing. Where will your imagination take you? Miriam Halahmy (@MiriamHalahmy) is an author and a poet. She has published four novels and three collections of poetry, as well as short stories and education resources. Her young-adult novel, Hidden, was a Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. It has recently been staged in a small Paris theatre. Her latest book The Emergency Zoo, inspired by real events during the Second World War, will be published in 2016. Philip Womack (@WomackPhilip) is the author of four critically acclaimed novels for children; his fifth, The Double Axe, a reimagining of the Minotaur myth, will be published by Alma books in February 2016. After a life-long passion for Classics, he teaches Latin and Greek, and has lectured on mythology for the How: To Academy. He is a Fellow of First Story, being writer in residence at St Augustine’s Kilburn. Monica Vaughan (@NoSleepNeeded) has spent the last eight years working in special needs, mostly with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. She is the author of The Ability, Mindscape about telekinetic preteens and the forthcoming Six. Kirsty Wadsley is Head of Widening Participation at LSE. LSE Widening Participation work with over 2400 students in London schools and colleges each year with the aim of raising their aspirations and awareness of university study. These schemes are not just aimed at increasing the number of applications to LSE, but are aimed at encouraging students to apply to fulfil their potential at the best university for them.