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May 2025
Photo of Ben Okri with book cover image for Madame Sosostris
May 28 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Festival Launch
  • Fiction

Launch Event: Madame Sosostris & the Festival for the Broken Hearted

Ben Okri

Part vision, part mystery, this story of a midsummer night’s madness, in multi-award-winning poet, playwright and novelist Ben Okri’s inimitable style, is as alive with echoes and reverberations as the enchanted forest itself. Read more

June 2025
Photo of Abi Daré alongside image of book cover for And So I Roar
June 3 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Fiction

And So I Roar

Abi Daré

Equally tender and powerful, Daré's evocative follow up to her highly acclaimed debut The Girl With the Louding Voice finds Adunni settling into her new life and school in Lagos, until dramatic news forces her to return to her home village. Read more

June 4 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Fiction

England is Mine

Nicolas Padamsee

Named one of the Observer’s best new novelists for 2024, Nicolas Padamsee will be heading to Hot Box to talk about his brilliant coming-of-age thriller. England is Mine is an urgent debut which takes the reader on a frightening journey into online radicalisation and extremism. Read more

Photo of Monique Roffey alongside image of book cover for Passiontide
June 5 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Fiction

Passiontide

Monique Roffey

Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, Monique Roffey, will discuss her electrifying new novel about four women who spark a revolution on a Caribbean island. In a community in which women’s voices are often silenced, a group soon find themselves compelled to speak out when a young female steel-pan player is found dead beneath a cannonball tree. Read more

June 16 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Fiction
  • Partner Event

An Evening with Elif Shafak

Maldon Books

Maldon Books is thrilled to welcome award-winning author, Elif Shafak, to the URC this June! Elif will be discussing her latest acclaimed novel, 'There Are Rivers in the Sky' to a live audience and signing books afterwards. Read more

June 18 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Fiction

England is Mine – Date changed to 4th June

Nicolas Padamsee

Named one of the Observer’s best new novelists for 2024, Nicolas Padamsee will be heading to Hot Box to talk about his brilliant coming-of-age thriller. England is Mine is an urgent debut which takes the reader on a frightening journey into online radicalisation and extremism. Read more

Photos of Maggi Hambling and James Cahill
June 22 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
  • Art
  • Fiction
  • ONLY A FEW TICKETS LEFT!

The Violet Hour

Maggi Hambling and James Cahill

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear one of Britain’s most significant and controversial artists, Maggi Hambling, in conversation with art historian, James Cahill about his new book. A story of deception, power play and longing, The Violet Hour exposes the unsettling underbelly of the art world, asking: who is granted admission to a world that only seems to glitter and who is left outside, their faces pressed to the glass? Join us for what is sure to be an honest,… Read more

Photo of Keiran Goddard alongside image of book cover I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
June 26 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
  • Fiction

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

Keiran Goddard

Bold, ambitious and stylistically striking, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning explores the redeeming and transforming beauty of friendship and examines the true limits of hope and forgiveness. A special book club event in collaboration with Appetite Book Club and Red Lion Books. Read more