European Writers’ Festival 2 – Participating Authors Bios
June 10, 2024
European Writers’ Festival 2 – What Our Partners Say
June 10, 2024
FESTIVAL PRESENTERS
(In alphabetical order)
TIM BEASLEY-MURRAY
Associate Professor of European Thought with UCL’s BASc Programme. He is also Director of the PhD Programme in Creative Critical Writing, and Academic Director of the new Creative Humanities BA. Tim’s research embraces literature, philosophy and political theory and deals with European culture broadly, especially French, German, Russian, and Czech and Slovak.
WILL FORRESTER
Translation and International Manager at English PEN. He co-edited All Walls Collapse: Stories of Separation(2022) and led the editorial team for My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women (2022). He worked in the visual arts in Malaysia and as an independent expert for the EU Commission’s Creative Europe programme. He is a Clore Emerging Leader 2022, a Bookseller Rising Star 2023, and a judge for the 2024 US National Translation Award.
ROSIE GOLDSMITH
Artistic Director European Writers’ Festival. Founder and Director of the European Literature Network and Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter magazine. An award-winning broadcaster, she spent 20 years with the BBC in arts and foreign affairs. Today an arts journalist and presenter, Rosie was chair of the judges for the EBRD Literature Prize 2018-2020 and host of the British Library’s European Literature Night 2009-2017.
LUKE HARDING
Award-winning journalist and writer, reporting from Ukraine since 2007. In 2011, as the Guardian’s bureau chief, the Kremlin deported him from Russia, the first such case since the Cold War. Luke is the author of 8 acclaimed books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Collusion: How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win; A Very Expensive Poison; Shadow State; and Mafia State. His latest book Invasion was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and awarded Ukraine’s Journalism Book of the Year 2023.
THARIK HUSSAIN
Author, Travel Writer, Journalist, Academic. His debut book, Minarets in the Mountains, won the 2022 British Guild of Travel Writers’ Adele Evans Award. Tharik has written Lonely Planet guides to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Thailand, London and Britain. He developed Britain’s first Muslim heritage trails, broadcasts and writes for the BBC and other outlets across the world and is a fellow at the Centre for Religion and Heritage at the University of Groningen and the Royal Geographical Society in London.
TOBY LICHTIG
Toby Lichtig is the Fiction and Politics Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He writes for a range of publications and has appeared as a guest critic on various television and radio programmes. He also freelances as a documentary producer. Toby was chair of judges of the 2018 JQ/Wingate Prize and of the EBRD Literature Prize 2020-23.
REBECCA JONES
BBC Arts correspondent for more than two decades, as well as Chief News Presenter for BBC TV. She presented Newswatch, Meet the Author and Talking Books. She has judged arts awards, including Museum of the Year and the Costa Book Awards. She chairs regularly at festivals and has been board member and trustee of various arts organisations.
BEE ROWLATT
Bee Rowlatt is a writer and producer of cultural events at the British Library. In Search of Mary won the Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust award and was the Independent’s biography of the year. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad was dramatised by the BBC. Bee clocked over two decades at BBC World Service.
