Announcing our Autumn events season
‘Autumn, somewhere over Michigan, a colony of monarch butterflies, numbering more than fifteen thousand, are beginning their yearly migration south.’ – Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous We’re excited to announce our line up of events for this Autumn season – now open for booking! Autumn often brings the anticipation of a new term, and new beginnings. […]
Join Our Team!
The RSL is growing! We’re currently recruiting across communications and events with three new vacancies! You’ll be joining team RSL in what is an exiting time of growth and development for our charity to help diversify the RSL’s growing programme of work, led by principles of experimentation, inclusivity and accessibility. If you think you could be our […]
HowTheLightGetsIn Festival
This September, we are delighted to be partnering with HowTheLightGetsIn – taking place at Kenwood House in London. HowTheLightGetsIn is the world’s largest music and philosophy festival. The full programme sees speakers spanning Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, Ruby Wax, Michio Kaku, Martin Wolf, and Carol Gilligan, all take to the stage. Addressing the theme ‘Dangers, Desires, and Destiny’, debates and talks will interrogate what an increasingly […]
FTWEEKEND Festival
This September, we are delighted to be partnering with FTWeekend – where curious minds meet – taking place at Kenwood House in London, and online. The award-winning FTWeekend Festival returns to Kenwood House on 2 September, with speakers including Greg James, Simon Schama and Bee Wilson already confirmed for the day-long event where the weekend paper comes […]
RSL Fellows Recommend Books for Prison Readers
As part of a new initiative with our partners Give a Book and Prison Reading Group, RSL Fellows will be contributing book recommendations to Inside Time, the magazine for prison readers. The first writer to appear in the magazine is Max Porter, former bookseller and editor. His first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, […]
Windrush 75 in Verse: Young People’s Poems
Following our Windrush RAP Party event at the London Library in June, we invited young people to submit their own Windrush-inspired poems for the chance to see them published on our newly revamped website. We are delighted to announce that eight poems have been selected to sit alongside those of the professional poets. Many congratulations to Nia Brown, Michaela Chambers, Wenenda Chika, Anastasia Giodea, Annie […]
Watch the President’s Address from Bernardine Evaristo
On Wednesday 12 July 2023, we celebrated the induction of 62 new Fellows and Honorary Fellows — as well as those elected in recent years who had not been able to attend previous parties — at the Garden Museum in London. After being formally inducted by our President, Bernardine Evaristo, they then signed their names […]
New Fellows and Election Process Announced
On 12 July, we have announced 62 new appointments, including the second induction of writers elected to Fellowship through the RSL Open initiative. Launched as part of the bicentenary celebrations, the initiative has seen 60 new writers from communities, backgrounds and experiences currently under-represented in UK literary culture elected to Fellowship. At the induction event, […]
New Look for the RSL Launched!
The RSL has today unveiled a first look at a major redesign of our visual identity which will continue to roll out through the summer and into the Autumn, as we approach our 203rd birthday. Our new website now hosts close to a hundred different recordings and articles from past events, selected from the RSL’s […]
Daisy Hildyard Wins the 2023 Encore Award for ‘Emergency’
The 2023 Encore Award winner was revealed as Daisy Hildyard for Emergency (Fitzcarraldo Editions) on Thursday 15 June. This year the prize-winner was announced at a live event. Daisy Hildyard was unable to attend but was informed and accepted the award saying: ‘An award for a second attempt is a kind-hearted award and I am happy […]
The Pulse of a Perfect Heart: Three New Commissions
There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment […]
Paterson Joseph Wins the 2023 RSL Christopher Bland Prize
The 2023 RSL Christopher Bland Prize winner is Paterson Joseph for The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho (Dialogue Books). Paterson Joseph said: “I am happier about receiving the Christopher Bland Prize 2023 than I could have imagined. As a fledgling actor I wanted to be respected by my peers and to be looked upon […]