We are thrilled to announce prize-winning novelist, critic and cultural historian Marina Warner will read from her new work-in-progress, a novel inspired by her father’s bookshop in Egypt in the Fifties and will discuss her writing on the 1001 nights.

Marina Warner writes fiction, children’s books, criticism and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of female myths and symbols. Marina is also currently writing a book about magic and magicians, with the working title Stranger Magic. Marina has received a CBE and was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. www.marinawarner.com

Much of Marina Warner’s writing is concerned with an analysis of the mythology, folklore and archetypes surrounding the feminine throughout history. Her non-fiction books include Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (winner of Fawcett Book Prize), From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock. Researching fairy tales at the Getty Research Institute, Marina became only the second woman to deliver the BBC’s Reith Lectures, published as Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. Other books include Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, a collection of writing spanning 25 years Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature & Culture and Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors and Media into the Twenty-first Century. Her fiction includes The Lost Father (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize), Indigo, The Leto Bundle, Mermaids in the Basement and Murderers I Have Known and Other Stories. She has written the children's books The Impossible Day and The Wobbly Tooth and the libretti for the children’s opera The Legs of the Queen of Sheba, produced by English National Opera.