London Literary Events - August
Discover exciting literary events to add to you calendar this August
London is bursting with incredible literary events. Here are some of the highlights which you should add to your calendar for August.
Like what you see? Help me keep creating bookish content by treating me to a coffee. You’ll get really good karma 😉😘
An Evening with Vincenzo Latronico
Saturday 2nd August 2025
19:00 at Waterstones, London - Streatham
Join for a hugely exciting evening with Vincenzo Latronico to discuss his International Booker-shortlisted novel Perfection.
Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s twenty-four-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media. But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon.
Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp. Superbly translated by Sophie Hughes, Perfection is a taut, spare sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence, scathing and brilliantly affecting.
Book your tickets for An Evening with Vincenzo Latronico here.
An Evening with Hazel McBride
Wednesday 6th August 2025
18:00 at Waterstones, London - Covent Garden
Hazel McBride discusses her instant Sunday Times bestseller 'A Fate Forged in Fire'!
Once a territory built on matriarchal rule, Tìr Teine has been without a female heir for centuries. Through a long line of corrupt kings, an oppressive anti-magic teaching has infected the land - leading to the tragic decline of the dragons.
Aemyra was born to lead, gifted with fire magic from the Goddess Brigid. For years she has hidden in the shadows, waiting for the king to die so she can bond to his dragon, claim her birthright and protect her people.
When her carefully laid plans are foiled, Aemyra is thrust into a deadly game of politics and plots. Her greatest enemy? Prince Fiorean - the dragon-riding, fire-wielding royal whose icy arrogance and raw power thwart her every step. But as chaos engulfs the court, Aemyra and Prince Fiorean are forced to forge an uneasy alliance to survive. And in the heat of battle, their mutual hatred ignites something neither of them can control.
Behind enemy lines and slowly falling for the only man that stands between her and the throne, Aemyra begins to uncover the true weight of the crown. Will she ignite the flames of change for her people - or will love burn her alive?
Book your tickets for An Evening with Hazel McBride here.
Rejection: Tony Tulathimutte in Conversation with Sheena Patel
Tuesday 19th August 2025
20:30 at Foyles, Charing Cross Road
Following a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the thorniest problems of modern life: sex, relationships, identity and the internet.
Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and Rejection. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, n +1, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. The recipient of an O. Henry Award and a Whiting Award, he runs the writing class CRIT in Brooklyn.
Sheena Patel is a writer and assistant director for film and TV who was born and raised in North West London. She is part of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE collective, has been published in 4BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE (Rough Trade Books) and a poetry collection of the same name (FEM Press). In 2022 she was chosen as one of the Observer‘s Top 10 best debut novelists. I’m A Fan, here acclaimed debut novel, was Foyles Fiction Book of the Year in 2022.
Book your tickets for Rejection: Tony Tulathimutte in Conversation with Sheena Patel here.
An Evening with R.F. Kuang
Wednesday 20th August 2025
19:00 at Emmanuel Centre, London
Join for what promises to be an unmissable evening with bestselling author R.F. Kuang, as we celebrate the publication of her much-anticipated new novel, Katabasis.
The internationally bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface returns with Katabasis: a sublimely dark and unputdownable tale of two rival Cambridge academics who must join forces on a rescue mission in hell itself.
R.F. Kuang is now the author of six novels, with her debut novel The Poppy War written on her gap year in China and released in 2018. This was followed by The Dragon Republic (2019), The Burning God (2022), Babel (2022) and most recently Yellowface (2023).
Book your tickets for An Evening with R.F. Kuang here.
Damian Barr: The Two Roberts
Thursday 21st August 2025
19:45 at London Southbank Centre
He will stay like this forever, Robert’s arm draped round him. They will be forever twenty.
Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he’s off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls – and never leave his side.
Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow – its grand bazaar, botanical gardens and a whole hidden city – all the while loving each other behind closed doors.
With the world on the brink of war, their art takes them to Paris, Rome and, finally, to London. They will become stars as the bombs fall – their talent unrivalled, their parties legendary – mingling with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest.
At once a celebration of almost-forgotten artists MacBryde and Colquhoun, and a devastating picture of the price we pay for trying to change the way the world sees.
Book your tickets for Damian Barr: The Two Roberts here.
Samanta Schweblin in Conversation
Friday 22nd August 2025
20:30 at Foyles Charing Cross Road
The six unnerving stories in Schweblin’s latest collection is each as unpredictable as a snare: tight and sharp. Ranging from tragedy to love, the sinister to the beautiful, this is a virtuoso collection from an incomparable imagination.
Samanta Schweblin won the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature for her story collection, Seven Empty Houses. Her debut novel, Fever Dream, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and her novel Little Eyes and story collection Mouthful of Birds have been longlisted for the same prize. Her books have been translated into more than forty languages, and her stories have appeared in English in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s Magazine and elsewhere. Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin lives in Berlin.
Book your tickets for Samanta Schweblin in Conversation here.
Raymond Antrobus: The Quiet Ear
Wednesday 27th August 2025
19:45 at London Southbank Centre
Award-winning British-Jamaican writer Raymond Antrobus was first diagnosed as deaf at the age of seven. The Quiet Ear tells the story of Antrobus’ childhood, his first experience using hearing aids, his troubled adolescence and the parallel mainstream and deaf education systems.
Blending memoir, criticism and biography with a poet’s precision, Antrobus crafts a powerful meditation on deafness, language, and identity, offering a groundbreaking perspective on what it means to listen and be heard.
This launch event, hosted by Nadeem Islam and Rose Ayling-Ellis, brings together a range of D/deaf artists for performances and discussion, including a short performance of ‘Follow the Signs’, an autobiographical piece following dance artist and choreographer Chris Fonseca’s journey of self-discovery in BSL, rap and creative captions.
Book your tickets for Raymond Antrobus: The Quiet Ear here.
Like what you see? Help me keep creating bookish content by treating me to a coffee. You’ll get really good karma 😉😘