Please join us to celebrate the launch of Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020, the first nonfiction work from Fred D’Aguiar. Hosting the reading will be writer and critic, Blake Morrison, joining Fred to discuss the new book. The event will feature readings and discussion, and audience members will have the opportunity to ask their own questions. We will also be showing extracts of the text during the reading so that you can read along.

For acclaimed British-Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar, 2020 was a year of personal and global crisis. The world around him was shattered by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States, California burned, and D’Aguiar was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

Year of Plagues is an intimate, multifaceted exploration of these seismic events, which trouble and alienate D’Aguiar from community, place and body. Combining personal reminiscence and philosophy, drawing on music and on poetry, D’Aguiar confronts profound questions about the purpose of pursuing a life of writing and teaching in the face of overwhelming upheavals; the imaginative and artistic strategies a writer can bring to bear as his sense of self and community are severely tested; and the quest for strength and solace necessary to help forge a better future. Drawn from distinct cultural perspectives – his Caribbean upbringing, London youth and American lifestyle – D’Aguiar’s beautiful and challenging memoir is a paean of resistance to despotic authority and life-threatening disease.

Registration for this online event will cost £2, later redeemable against the cost of the book. All attendees will receive the discount code and how to purchase the book during and after event.