Ali Smith - Brave Now World: Ali Smith in Conversation with Peter Boxall

Ali Smith is in conversation with Peter Boxall at the Schwarzman Centre on Saturday 14 November, from 6:00 to 7:00pm. The talk opens the Utopia Now! conference, an international gathering put on by the Faculty of English that brings together writers and thinkers from different disciplines to look at the possibility of utopian imagining today, set against a backdrop of social, political and environmental crisis.

Smith is introduced as the novelist working today who has paid the closest attention to the contours of the present time. Her work ranges from novels like The Accidental, There But For The and How To Be Both, through her Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer), to her most recent pair Gliff and Glyph. In conversation with Boxall, she considers how pictures of the future come about and what role the literary imagination plays in making a different future possible.

The conference itself puts literary fiction in dialogue with philosophy and critical theory, with panels drawing on the environmental and medical humanities, linguistics, film studies, literary studies and political theory. There's also artwork by Marco Brambilla on display.

It all takes place at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, in the Oxford Theatre at the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter on Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. The talk runs from 6:00 to 7:00pm on Saturday 14 November.