Talk - Life Can Be Stranger than Fiction

Laurence Shelley is coming to the Plymouth Proprietary Library on Wednesday 11 November, for a talk he's calling Life Can Be Stranger than Fiction. He'll be talking about his novel Visions of Wilderness and the long, winding road that led to it.

The title isn't just for show. Shelley draws on his own life to write his fiction, and the things he pulls from are a strange mix: a dream, a walk across Devon, an unexpected role in a Dartmoor village play, and the real-life experience of brain injury, homelessness and recovery that shaped Visions of Wilderness. The talk looks at resilience, creativity and the power of storytelling, and Shelley shares how the journey to the book proved as remarkable as the story itself.

It's the kind of thing that works best when you can hear it from the author himself, and since he's talking about the actual life behind the fiction, it's more of a conversation than a reading. If you've ever wondered how a person turns their own history into a novel, this is exactly that.

The talk runs from 14:00 to 15:00 at the Plymouth Proprietary Library on St Barnabas Terrace, PL1 5NN. It's free for members and £5 for non-members. If you want to guarantee a seat, get in touch with the library at least 24 hours in advance; otherwise, you can just turn up on the day.