Talk by novelist and screenwriter Courttia Newland on being an artist outside the white Western canon, part of the 'Ethical Matters' series.
Courttia Newland is at Conway Hall on Sunday 18 October, talking about what it means to be an artist operating in the margins. The session is called Creating Beyond the Mainstream, and it's part of the 'Ethical Matters' series, presented as a TalkLondon talk and programmed as part of Bloomsbury Festival 2026.
Newland is a novelist and screenwriter who's spent a good deal of his career working outside the centre. During the talk, he'll reflect on centring one's own voice and reading outside the white Western canon, and he'll share his own experiences for anyone facing similar hurdles. It's the kind of conversation that's as much about the practical side of being a writer as it is about the broader questions of who gets to be heard.
He's got a substantial body of work to draw from. He's written nine books, including The Scholar and Cosmogramma, and his novel A River Called Time was shortlisted for the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Beyond his own fiction, he edited IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and co-wrote the BBC series Small Axe and The Woman in the Wall. In his book The Art of Opposition, he looks at oppositional artists like Percival Everett, Lou Mensah, Iain Banks and Jean Binta Breeze, so there's a clear thread of thinking about artists who push back against the grain running through his work.
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The talk runs for about 90 minutes and is open to all ages, with under-16s needing an adult. It's free to attend, with doors opening at 14:30 and the session starting at 15:00. You'll find it at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, London WC1R 4RL.
