How True Stories Make Us Care

Barbara Demick is speaking at Barnard's Inn Hall on Monday 26 October, from 6:00pm to 7:00pm. The talk is called How True Stories Make Us Care, and it's part of Gresham College's 'The Future of Journalism' series.

Demick is an award-winning American journalist and writer, and her work is built on a blend of depth, empathy and narrative clarity. She's spent years writing about the lives of North Koreans, Tibetans and people living in rural China — subjects that often feel distant or hard to reach. The talk gets to the heart of how she does it: how to make readers care about people whose names they can't pronounce and who live in places they've never visited. It's a question that sits at the core of foreign reporting, and one she's spent her career answering.

She doesn't shy away from the harder side of the job, either. She'll touch on the physical danger of reporting during war and the difficulties of covering an authoritarian country where journalists' travel is restricted and interview subjects can be arrested just for speaking out. If you've ever wondered how a story actually gets told when the people involved are in real danger, this is where she'll go into it.

It's all happening at Barnard's Inn Hall in Holborn, EC1N 2HH, which is part of Gresham College. The college has been running free public lectures since 1597, and the hall itself is a former Inn of Chancery with 16th-century linen-fold panelling and roof timbers that include the only surviving crown posts in Greater London. The talk runs from 6:00pm to 7:00pm, and it's free.