New Suns: A Feminist Literary Festival

On Saturday 5 October, we're heading back to the Barbican Centre for the second New Suns Feminist Literary Festival. Set up last year by Sarah Shin (who is also the brains behind all your favourite feminist small presses: Silver Press and Ignota Books), New Suns explores the intersection between contemporary feminism and technology. Sarah talks more about the origin of the festival, and this year's focus, in this interview with the Barbican:

'This year’s program starts from the premise that the technological imagination can be reclaimed as a portal to other worlds where the varieties of experience can be expanded and remade. So the events cover a terrain that includes poetry, speculative writing, feminist epistemologies, sound ritual as healing technology, contemporary technofeminism and reproductive justice.'

This year the festival takes inspiration from science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which subverts the dominant narrative of technologically driven ‘progress’. Ignota Books are publishing a special new edition of the essay, with introduction by Donna Haraway and illustrations by Lee Bul, to mark the occasion.

There are events on throughout the day, including talks, film screenings, poetry readings and workshops – you can find all the details on the Barbican website. Most excitingly: Michelle Tea will be there for a free event exploring tarot as a modern technology used to navigate and reflect our diverse world and modern lives. If you missed out on tickets for our sold out event with her at the Bookshop, make sure you come down for this one.

We’ll be there as part of free book fair that runs all day, selling a selection of books from feminist speculative fiction to our favourite new small press poetry, alongside comrades from And Other Stories, Fitzcarraldo Editions, Peninsular Press, Tilted Axis Press, The Second Shelf, Verso and many more.

For more information on New Suns, visit the Barbican Centre website.