World Literature Weekend: Dubravka Ugresic with Lisa Appignanesi

Sunday 21 June at 12.00 p.m.
Venue: Stevenson Room, British Museum, London, UK

An award-winning novelist and essayist, Dubravka Ugresic reflects on femininity, ageing, identity, secrets and love. These are the themes of her new novel, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, a modern reworking of a traditional myth, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson. She will be in conversation with Lisa Appignanesi, currently the President of English PEN, and author of Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present. Susan Sontag described Ugresic as ‘a writer to follow, a writer to be cherished’; Marina Warner has said that she has ‘a unique tone of voice, a madcap wit and a lively sense of the absurd’. Born in former Yugoslavia, she currently lives in Amsterdam.

Dubravka Ugresic was born in 1949 in Croatia. She worked for twenty years at the Institute for Theory of Literature at Zagreb University, successfully pursuing parallel careers as a writer and a literary scholar. She started writing professionally as an undergraduate, authoring screenplays for children’s television programs. In 1971 she published her first book for children, which was awarded a prestigious Croatian literary prize for children’s literature. Since then, she has won a host of awards, including the PEN Writers in Translation Award in 2006.

Lisa Appignanesi was born in Poland and now lives in London. She became Deputy President of English PEN in 2004 and led its highly successful ‘Free Expression is No Offence’ campaign. She became President in 2008. She has published numerous works of fiction and non-fiction; her latest, Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800, has been shortlisted for various prizes.

Part of the London Review Bookshop’s World Literature Weekend

Ticket prices include postage. Concessionary rates available for LRB subscribers, Friends of the British Museum, students and OAPs – please call +44 (0)20 7209 1141