An Evening With Xiaolu Guo, In Conversation With Jon Mcgregor

Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese-born author, screenwriter and film maker. She studied at Beijing Film Academy, and later at the National Film and Television School in the UK. As a novelist she is perhaps best known here for A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, her first novel written in English (rather than published in translation.

Her chronicle of a year by the sea, My Battle of Hastings, a rich and perceptive account of the author’s life in that East Sussex seaside town and her greater immersion in the English landscape will have just come out in paperback for this event, while her latest novel Call Me Ishmaelle is a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York. There she boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by the past.

Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick.

Guo has written and directed several award-winning films and documentaries and has taught Creative Writing and Film at various universities, including Kings College London and Harvard.

Jon McGregor is one of Nottingham’s best known authors, with several novels to his name. He also appears in Duets, where he has written a short story jointly with Gurnaik Johal. Can you see the join? Jon is the editor of the literary magazine The Letters Page

Note reduction in price for library members! The book referred to is Call Me Ishmaelle. Her other books will also be available on the night.

Doors open 6.30

Bar/coffee bar available from 6.30