Lancaster International Fiction Lecture

Georgi Gospodinov, sitting in a chair with his novel Time Shelter

Fiction and storytelling are art forms shared across the languages of the world. This lecture celebrates the diversity of this artform from an international perspective, inviting world-renowned authors to discuss the role of literary fiction in life, politics and culture.

The Lancaster International Fiction Lecture takes place online.

Forthcoming Lecture

Details of this year's lecture will be available soon.

Past Lectures

Guadelupe Nettel
Guadalupe Nettel [credit Mely Ávila]

The Alchemy of Literature: A Lecture on Pain

A fantastic lecture by Guadelupe Nettel (translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey), delivered during the Litfest Autumn Weekend 2024.

Why do you think that, even now, in the twenty-first century, books are being banned? They are banned because they liberate, because they open minds.

A quote from Guadalupe Nettel

What Fiction (Including in Translation) Can Do in Times Like Ours

For Litfest’s Autumn Weekend 2023, the International Fiction Lecture was delivered by Georgi Gospodinov, winner of the 2023 Booker International Prize for the novel Time Shelter.

We live in a world where there is no longer a center and a periphery. When we have a pandemic, war or catastrophe, the center of pain is everywhere.

A quote from Georgi Gospodinov
Geetanjali Shree

Writing in Troubled Times

As part of Litfest’s Autumn Weekend 2022, we were delighted to welcome Booker International Prize winner Geetanjali Shree, who gave the second annual Lancaster International Fiction Lecture on Tuesday, 11 October 2022. You can catch up via the online streaming platform Crowdcast.

Geetanjali Shree: Writing in Troubled Times

Fiction came to us from the West. Creativity did not. A long lineage of art and literature enriched imagination and expression here.

A quote from Geetanjali Shree

Fiction as the News

Juan Gabriel Vásquez gave the inaugural Lancaster International Fiction Lecture on Tuesday, 12 October 2021 at 7:30pm as part of Litfest’s first ‘Autumn Weekend’.

This, I believe, is fiction’s claim to being an international art form: its ability to liberate us from our frustratingly limited perspectives on life.

A quote from Juan Gabriel Vásquez