Join us for a special UK launch of Sarah Thomas’ ecological memoir The Raven’s Nest. Sarah will be in conversation with Christina Riley (The Nature Library) then will give an extended reading in the Icelandic tradition of kvöldvaka (‘evening wake’), where in the evening, someone would read aloud to the household as they knitted, darned and mended. Audience members are invited to bring items with them that they would like to mend during the reading. Booking necessary. A free drop-in mending workshop will take place prior to the event (2 – 4pm).
Join Sarah for an Icelandic kvöldvaka (evening reading) as she reads aloud from The Raven’s Nest, her memoir set in Iceland’s Westfjords, in a place so culturally intertwined. In keeping with the tradition, guests are invited to bring their knitting and mending projects to work on as she reads. Free.
Following in the tradition of writers like Nan Shepherd, Sarah Thomas and Esther Woolfson showcase their recent work, combining travel and nature writing, memoir, and scientific study, to address some of the most pressing concerns of our time. Discussing their beautiful and transformative new books The Raven’s Nest and Between Light and Storm: Our Lives with Other Species, Thomas and Woolfson show us new ways to inhabit the earth.
Join Sarah Thomas and writer and visual artist Amanda Thompson in the Lighthouse Garden for what promises to be a truly insightful conversation on making and finding homes. Together, they ask how the identities of places interact with our individual, cultural ones, and how the earth itself can help us find our way home. Buy tickets.
Atlantic and Sam Read Bookseller present an online author talk and Q&A with Sarah Thomas to discuss The Raven’s Nest. Thomas will be in conversation with Will Smith, a bookseller at Sam Read’s. Tickets: £2:00.
After dinner, join Sarah in the turf-roofed former home of Jón Sigurðsson, leader of Iceland’s C19th independence movement, for a kvöldvaka (evening reading) as she reads from her Westfjords memoir The Raven’s Nest. A double bill with Henry Fletcher, co-author of Walking and Wayfinding in the Westfjords (5pm). Refreshments available from 6pm.
Join Sarah in Iceland’s oldest still operating bookstore (est. 1914), where proprietor Eyþór Jóvinsson is the great-grandson of the store’s founder and second-hand books are sold by the kilo! Joined by Henry Fletcher, co-author of Walking and Wayfinding in the Westfjords, they will share extracts from their work.
Sarah Thomas transports us to the beauty and resilience of Iceland’s elemental Westfjords, its landscape and people, through a special first live reading from her new ecological memoir The Raven’s Nest. Bringing us the Icelandic tradition of kvöldvaka – ‘the evening wake’– where the household would gather to knit, darn and spin while being read to, you are warmly welcomed to bring your mending projects! Sarah will be signing books afterwards.