Ali Smith | Gliff
Sun 24 Nov 2024 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm
We’re incredibly excited to welcome bestselling novelist Ali Smith to present the first of two new, interconnected books. In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take? And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?
Gliff – a Scottish/northern word for a shock, a fright, a transient moment, a glance or sudden glimpse – is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it’s a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.
In form and feeling, Gliff will light a new, fabular and fabulist path for Ali Smith and for us through the gathering darkness of our chaotic times.
In conversation with artist Sarah Wood.
Venue: Cambridge Union
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets available soon.
Author Biography
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women’s Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge and is an Honorary Patron of the festival.
Chair
Sarah Wood works with the found object, particularly the still and moving image, as an act of reclamation and re-interrogation. She works mainly with the documentary image to interrogate the relationship between the narrating of history and individual memory. Recently she’s been focussing on the meaning of the archive, in particular the politics of memory, asking not only why some objects are preserved while others are ignored but also why preservation is made at certain historical moments. Wood also works with artists’ film as a curator. With Selina Robertson she co-founded Club des Femmes, a positive female space for the re-examination of ideas through art.
