Damian Barr's Literary Salon

For a change of pace we’re featuring our very first children’s book on the Lit Salon podcast! As a special treat, all this month we’ll be featuring children’s and YA books, selecting titles for kids and adults who are kids at heart.  We’re kicking things off with the riveting fantasy novel Feast of the Evernight by Ross Mackenzie (suitable for ages 9+). With the events of the Evernight behind her,...

We’re thrilled to feature another unmissable novel by a debut author exploding onto the literary scene. The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton is a novel Cosmopolitan is calling 'an absorbing tale bursting with colour', told through an oral history reminiscent of bestselling novel Daisy Jones & The Six, but with its own unique style and fully realised characters.  Back in New York in t...

Welcome to the latest instalment of Salon News! Listen in for all the goss on mystery filming Damian's doing, our new Reading Agency partnership, proof that books make you a better person, and our upcoming Salons - the next few months are promising to be glorious! We start with an incredibly exciting FREE Salon on Thursday 22nd April (8pm UK time), with the iconic architect and designer David Rock...

We're delighted to share an exclusive extract with you from this immersive, sweeping debut! In Lucy Holland’s Sistersong we travel back to 6th century Britain to a kingdom besieged by Saxons and their Christian god. Three sisters are all that stands between the old ways and a world on the precipice of change. Riva, Keyne and Sinne become entangled in a web of treachery and heartbreak, and must fig...

For those of you who remember our Shoreditch House days, we launched Craig Taylor’s 'Londoners' there to great acclaim. The Canadian journalist is part of our beloved alumni so while we can’t celebrate his follow-up book 'New Yorkers' in person, we’re thrilled to offer our listeners the next best thing. Craig’s new book captures the city’s vibrancy, diversity and resilience no matter what’s thrown...

No one really knows what happened that night. The seas were calm, the doors locked from the inside of the lighthouse and all the clocks were stopped. Somehow they vanished without a trace, leaving their widows and the villagers with so many unanswered questions. Over time the simplest explanations gave way to conspiracy theories and ghost stories, and twenty years on a writer has come to speak wit...

We're delighted to share Ali Benjamin's exclusive reading from The Smash-Up with you! A novel with rather more than a soupçon of satire, this timely book hones in on a snapshot of history to probe the depths of the culture wars in America. Zo is swept up in the politics of the #MeToo movement, the Kavanaugh hearings, and her duties to the feminist activism group she formed: All Them Witches. Ethan...

We’re delighted to be featuring Lesley Storm’s beautiful collection of poems - It's About Time: Poems of an Uncertain Woman. At 67-years-old, Lesley has written a meditation on the passing of time, her reflections living as a trans woman and overcoming adversity, and what it means to her to be a woman. Here are love poems, life poems, elegies, aubades, odes, existential solitude poems, prose poems...

Welcome to the latest instalment of Salon News! Listen in for all the goss on our upcoming Salon which already promises to be our most-attended online Salon ever! We'll be speaking with Russell T Davies, the writer/creator of It's A Sin, the Channel 4 series that's on everybody's lips at the moment, as well as Queer As Folk, Dr Who, Years and Years and many other gems. And we'll be talking with Ru...

Our latest Salon Exclusive is particularly dear to us. Deborah Orr was a friend of Damian - they grew up in the same corner of Scotland at different times and both wrote memoirs about it. ‘Motherwell’ is Deborah’s memoir and it is as brilliant as the woman herself was. Deborah was a glittering regular at our Salons over the years- maybe you met her there or in the pages of the Guardian, where her...

Listen in to our exclusive launch of 'Some Body To Love' with Alexandra Heminsley. In this special online Salon we celebrate the brilliant new book from the author of 'Running Like A Girl' and 'Leap In' on her publication day! In her latest memoir Alex takes her body as her subject: we wince at every needle as she reveals what IVF is really like and rejoice with her as she gets the family she's gi...

We’re thrilled to introduce you to another stellar debut author - Robert Jones, Jr. And his novel The Prophets. Robert is founder of the social media community Son of Baldwin, which speaks powerfully from a Black queer perspective. Robert famously said: ‘We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.’ The...

Darien Hsu Gee is an award-winning author of five novels and winner of the 2019 Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. We’re always saying we want to share more poetry so we’re thrilled to share this beautiful collection with you that traces the author’s matrilineal heritage through five generations - Other Small Histories. If you enjoyed Darien’s reading, Other Small Histories is availa...

Douglas Stuart has just won The 2020 Booker Prize for his incredible debut novel 'Shuggie Bain', so to celebrate we're releasing the never-published-before Literary Salon we held with Douglas in June! In a special private event Douglas joined us online all the way from New York, along with viewers from around the world, and treated us to the very first UK reading from Shuggie Bain. Listen in to en...

Our recent event with Dolly was our most popular online Salon to date, with hundreds and hundreds of Salonistas joining from all over the world – and we have a an exclusive clip for you to feast your ears on, about the highs and lows of sex with a new flame. Even more excitingly, the whole evening can now be yours forever for the price of a drink! For £5 receive access to a special private YouTube...

Welcome to the latest instalment of Salon News! We've had so much excitement recently and so many people wanting to hear what we’ve got coming up, so we've answered your call. Listen in for all the goss on THE RETURN OF OUR TV SERIES, what the last Salon of the year is (and yes there are still some tickets though they're flying!), who's been sharing ghostly stories, and why Damian is putting all h...

We love a debut author and emerging Northern literary talent Eliza Clark is no exception. In Boy Parts we meet Irina who obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she's offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in...

“Tamara is going to kill her mother, but she isn't the villain…” The Sound Mirror spans three familial generations from British Occupied India to Southern England following the joys and heartaches of Tamara, Claire and Ada. But how do their lives intersect? Through intimately rendered characters, Heidi James has crafted a haunting and moving examination of class, war, violence, family and shame fr...

Premiering at the Literary Salon we have Neil Blackmore’s wildly seductive new novel. Raised in isolation, Edgar and Benjamin Bowen have lived a cloistered life. But now they’re on a Grand European Tour to improve their station in the world they're discovering that climbing the social hierarchy is not without its perils. If you liked The Talented Mr Ripley, you’ll love The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle,...

An exclusive treat for our Salonistas: get ready for a sneak peek of SJ Watson’s phenomenal new thriller, Final Cut! SJ continues to push the boundaries of the psychological thriller genre he's celebrated for reinvigorating with his first novel, international bestseller (and film) Before I Go To Sleep. In this new book we meet award-winning documentarian Alex, who's looking for a location to base...

From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce brings us a funny and perceptive escapist adventure novel that’s just what's needed for our troubled times.  1950 London. Schoolmarm Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job to pursue her childhood obsession: seek out the golden beetle of New Caledonia - that may or may not exist. When she advertises for an assistan...

Right now, there are, according to the UNHCR, at least 25.9 million refugees in the world — the most ever recorded. Every single one of these people has a past and present. Every single one of these people deserves a future. Every single one of these people has a story and some of these feature in a bold new anthology called Imagine and Salon is sharing some of them in a special episode of our pod...

We’re so thrilled to feature Douglas Stuart (an Observer debut novelist to watch for in 2020) as a Salon Exclusive! Enjoy the world premiere of Shuggie Bain, the unforgettable story of a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in the run-down public housing of Glasgow. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the...

The incandescent John Niven treated us to a brilliant reading and at turns hilarious at turns terrifying conversation at our recent online Salon (relocated from the Savoy). The F*ck-it List is John's new satire, set in a near-future America that’s so horribly real it veers dangerously close to non-fiction. This America survived two terms of Donald and is now in the first term of Ivanka. Frank Bril...

Polly Samson and family regaled us with exclusive readings and a Q and A at our very first live online Salon, relocated from the Savoy, attracting 50,000 viewers from around the world! Listen in as Polly and family read to us from her latest novel, 'A Theatre For Dreamers'. Set in 1960, the world is flirting with revolution and disaster and the Greek island of Hydra is a heady microcosm, home to a...