Event type: Talk

Join our Collections Manager Josh for a tour of the two exhibitions curated from our collection, exploring the works of Albert Richards and Philip Wilson Steer.

These talks will offer the opportunity for you to find out more about the narrative of each exhibition, the stories we wanted each exhibition to tell, and give you background into the lives of each artist. There will be one talk a month throughout 2025. Please consider giving a donation with your booking to support the work of the Williamson.     Click Here to Book Now   Dates & Times:

Wednesday 26th March, 11am

Friday 25th April, 6pm

Wednesday 14th May, 11am

Friday 20th June, 6pm

Wednesday 16th July, 11am

Friday 22nd August, 6pm

Wednesday 17th September, 11am

Friday 17th October, 6pm

Wednesday 12th November, 11am

Friday 19th December, 6pm

Beyond Black America: Insights from Brazilian History is the focus of this compelling online talk by friend of WoW Professor Stephen Small, urging us to look beyond familiar narratives of the Black experience. While Black America has profoundly shaped global Black identity, the Black experience across the Americas is far more diverse.

Join us for this insightful online talk as Professor Small explores the rich and often overlooked history of Black Brazilians, relevant to Liverpool. He will illuminate key differences: Brazil has twice the Black population of the US, primarily Portuguese-speaking, with a slavery history beginning centuries earlier and tragically involving ten times more enslaved Africans. Brazil was the last independent nation in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888.Crucially, the talk will highlight the remarkable resistance of enslaved people in Brazil, where larger, sustained rebellions led to extensive Maroon communities – a vital, often overlooked history. As a Guest Curator at Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, Professor Small will also touch upon Liverpool’s historical trade and political relations with Brazil.

Professor Stephen Small taught at the Department of African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1995-2024. He is Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues since 2020. Born in Toxteth, he earned his PhD in Sociology at the Unversity of California, Berkeley in 1989 and has held visiting positions at universities in the UK, Netherlands, France, Spain, Brazil, Japan and Zimbabwe.

*These are difficult times. We know some people may struggle to afford full price tickets. If you would like to attend this event but can’t afford to, please contact info@writingonthewall.org.uk. All queries will be treated in confidence.   

 

Not only is Kit de Waal an incredibly talented writer and storyteller, she is also a champion for elevating the voices and opportunities for diverse, working class writers, putting her money where her mouth is by creating the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Scholarship to help improve working-class representation in the arts.

It’s a pleasure to welcome her back to WoWFEST for this online event discussing her latest novel, The Best of Everything, described by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo as ‘A profoundly compassionate novel of devastating power’. The Best of Everything follows Paulette’s planning for her future perfect wedding, honeymoon, perfect life. But life has other plans for her. Denton disappears without a goodbye, his friend Garfield steps in—and soon, there’s a baby, and Paulette finds purpose raising her son. But it isn’t enough, and Paulette finds can’t she stop thinking about Nellie, a little boy growing up nearby with no mother in sight? A moving tale of unexpected love and the ties that pull us in, no matter our plans. Pull up a chair and get your hankies ready.

British/Irish writer Kit de Waal is the author of multiple novels. My Name Is Leon was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was adapted for BBC2; The Trick to Time was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction; her acclaimed biography Without Warning and Only Sometimes was Radio 4 Book of the Week, and shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. She has written extensively about the need for the publishing industry to be more inclusive, was editor of Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers. and presented the BBC Radio 4 programme Where Are All the Working Class Writers?

 

Dive into the raw, untamed heart of storytelling with ‘Wild Writing,’ a festival exploration of memoir, fiction, and the spaces in between. Join Jeff Young, navigating the hallucinatory landscapes of memory in Wild Twin; Jake Morris-Campbell, charting a poetic pilgrimage through Northumbria in Between the Salt and the Ash; and Tony Wailey, evoking the maritime rhythms of Liverpool’s past in his series The Diary of the Smyth-Wailey’s.

Discover how these writers push the boundaries of form, blending fact and feeling to forge new, powerful ways of telling our stories. From personal journeys to regional odysseys, experience the wild, transformative power of words.

Jeff Young is a Liverpool-based writer for screen, stage, and radio. A former Creative Writing lecturer, he is the author of Ghost Town (Costa Prize-shortlisted) and Wild Twin, a dreamlike memoir of travel, memory, and loss.

Tony Wailey is a Liverpool-born writer and former seaman. His work explores . His work, including his forthcoming book, Rhythms That Carry, maritime history and identity, with a focus on Liverpool’s seafaring past entwined with the personal stories of those who lived it.

Jake Morris-Campbell is a poet and BBC New Generation Thinker from South Shields. In Between the Salt and the Ash (March 2025), he embarks on a pilgrimage across Northumbria, exploring history, identity, and cultural change.

Brian Bilston and Henry Normal appear together for the first time in a show which one critic has described as “two people reading some poems.”

Along the way, they will be drawing on their vast catalogue of crowd favourites – and throwing in new poems to prevent becoming their own tribute bands.

Not ones to overpromise, Brian and Henry are prepared to commit to delivering the greatest poetry show in the history of the world, or their names aren’t Brian Bilston and Henry Normal. An evening of poems to be enjoyed, not endured.

Brian Bilston has been described as the Banksy of poetry and Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate; with over 400,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community. He has published several collections of poetry, including You Took the Last Bus Home and Alexa, What Is There to Know About Love?, described by one reviewer as ‘the funniest collection of humorous verse I have seen in a long time’. His novel Diary of a Somebody was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. He has also written poetry for children, including a collection of football poems, 50 Ways to Score a Goal, while his acclaimed poem Refugees was set to music by composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and turned into a picture book.

Henry is a writer, poet, TV and film producer, founder of the Manchester Poetry Festival (now the Literature Festival), and co-founder of the Nottingham Poetry Festival. In June 2017, he was honoured with a special BAFTA for services to television. He co-wrote and script-edited the multi-award-winning Mrs Merton Show and the spin-off series Mrs Merton and Malcolm. Setting up Baby Cow Productions Ltd in 1990, Henry executive produced all and script-edited many of the shows during its 17-and-a-half-year output. Highlights of the Baby Cow output during his time include the Oscar-nominated film Philomena, I Believe in Miracles, Gavin and Stacey, Moone Boy, Uncle, Marion and Geof, Nighty Night, The Mighty Boosh, Red Dwarf, Hunderby, Camping, and Alan Partridge.

Presented with the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.

In the 21st century, the world is changing fast — and nowhere more so than in Ireland. Once a homogenous society, today, Ireland is a vibrant mix of ethnicities, religions, and cultures, giving the country a fresh, modern vibe. Yet, while this new Irish identity is something to celebrate, not everyone is at ease with the rapidly changing face of Ireland.

In Liverpool, where cultural fusion has long been part of our roots, we understand what it means to adapt and thrive in the face of change. But how does Ireland’s shift towards a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society shape its own unique version of ‘Irishness’? And what struggles do those at the forefront of this transformation face as they carve out a new space in Irish society?

Come and hear three women who are meeting those challenges through literature and the arts: Irish-Punjabi author and editor Gabrielle Fullan; writer, disabled activist and dancer Maryam Madani; and Black Studies lecturer and author Philomena Mullen.

Join their panel to reflect on your shared experiences and learn from the evolving story of Ireland. It’s more than just a conversation — it’s about connecting the dots between communities and cultures. This event is in partnership with Speaking Volumes through their Breaking Ground Ireland Arts Council England funded project.

Gabrielle Fullam is an Irish-Punjabi writer from Dublin. She was appointed Whitechapel Gallery’s Young Writer in Residence 2024. She is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University, and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where she also served as President of the Student Union. She is a former editor of Icarus magazine, Ireland’s oldest literary journal.

Maryam Madani is a writer, disabled activist, dancer and the Founder/Chair of the grassroots organisation Disability Power Ireland. She organised Ireland’s first Disability Pride Festival (July 2022 and 2023) and Ireland’s first and second Disability Pride Parade for Disability Power Ireland (July 2023 and 2024). She has been a wheelchair dancer/performer and member of Undercurrent Dance Company since June 2023. Maryam has performed with Disrupt Disability Arts Festival, St. Patrick’s Festival, Milk and Cookie Stories and more. She has a BA in English Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA in Journalism from Technological University Dublin.

Philomena Mullen is A Black Studies lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, was born to an Irish mother and a Nigerian father, and spent her first sixteen years in an Irish industrial school. She has been supported by Skein Press to develop her stories further. Among others, Philomena has read at: Silence+Voice – A Festival of Feminisms; the Royal Irish Academy; Breaking the Silence – Creative Responses to the Legacy of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Home Institutions (National Concert Hall and International Literature Festival Dublin project, 2021); and Echoes: Maeve Binchy and Irish Writers Festival.

In Green Ink, Stephen May reimagines the disappearance of Victor Grayson – disgraced socialist firebrand, secret service informant, bisexual hedonist and a man who knew too much. His disappearance is one of British politics’ most beguiling mysteries. Stephen May presents his historical speculation with bite, wit and electrifying drama.

As Prime Minister David Lloyd George hides out with his mistress at Chequers, a scandal over the selling of public honours looms—and Grayson threatens to expose it all. But in 1920, secrets are dangerous, and the cost of truth might just be a life.

Join acclaimed novelist Stephen May for an evening of intrigue, humour, and revolutionary politics as he discusses Green Ink, praised as ‘funny, scurrilous, revealing and memorable’ (Historical Novel Society) and a vivid and wholly credible recreation of post-Great War London’ (Robert Edric).

Part political thriller, part literary mystery, Green Ink asks not only what happened to Victor Grayson—but what might still be happening today.

Stephen May is the author of six novels including Life! Death! Prizes! which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize. He has been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year and is a winner of the Media Wales Reader’s Prize. He has written plays, as well as for television and film. He lives in West Yorkshire.

In 1984, John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, was appointed to investigate a series of killings in Northern Ireland by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, where it was alleged that a secret shoot-to-kill policy was in operation.

Shortly after making demands for intelligence files belonging to the RUC and MI5, he was removed from post. In his subsequent memoir published in 1987, Stalker went on to expose a conspiracy behind his sacking that would see additional mystery surround the events that he had set out to investigate.

Two years later, another killing raised further allegations of the British state’s involvement in murder. On 12 February 1989, the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association shot dead the Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane in front of his family, including his young son John. Subsequent inquiries by John Stevens, Chief Constable of Northumbria Police, got close to the truth, despite shadowy forces attempting to burn down his incident room. In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to apologise to both Patrick Finucane’s family and Parliament for the ‘shocking levels of collusion’ where state agents played key roles in the solicitor’s murder. More recently, the Labour government has announced that they will, finally, set up a Public Inquiry into the case.

This event sees John Finucane MP, in conversation with Prof Paddy Hillyard of Queens University, Belfast to discuss the impact of MI5’s secret intelligence-led counter-insurgency strategy in the context of both the Stalker investigation and the killing of John’s father Patrick.

Paddy Hillyard is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Queens University, Belfast and author of Decades of Deceit: The Stalker Affair and its Legacy.

John Finucane is a solicitor, a former Lord Mayor and since 2017, the MP for Belfast North. John is a long-term campaigner for a public inquiry into the killing of his father.

A poetic exploration of Oglet Shore, a fragile green edgeland clinging to the Mersey that is being threatened by local industry.Liverpool Dead Good Poets Society are hosting a poetic exploration of the fragile green edgeland clinging to the Mersey and threatened by the expansion of local industry and Liverpool Airport.

Featuring the work of DGPS and other local poets, with a focus on the beauty of the shore as it is now, looking at the threats to its future from commercial development and climate change, and celebrating the community activities designed to conserve ‘Liverpool’s last survivng wilderness.’

‘The Oglet moon on winter nightsalights on backs of otterswhile egrets sleep an d bats skim lowacross the silver waters.’-Greg Quiery

In association with Save Oglet Shore (SOS) and Writing on the Wall (WoW).

All post-expense proceeds go to Save Oglet Shore.

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end Second World War. Gary Younge, renowned journalist, author and broadcaster, returns to WoWFEST to highlight how, following the war, despite the huge role that they played in WW11, black people have been written out of the story.

The 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris offers an opportunity to explore the discrepancy between race-based mythologies around Black involvement in the Second World War. Revisiting a photographed moment from near the end of the second world war, ‘through the eyes of the colonised’, Younge will ‘explore a range of mythologies about who fought and what they were fighting for’. and what that tells us about Europe as a whole and how Black people’s presence here is misunderstood. He will also ‘unpick what that tells us about Europe as a whole and how black people’s presence here is misunderstood today’.

Gary asks how  conversations about responsibility, patriotism, immigration, integration, equality, and justice would be understood if the contribution of black people was written back in rather than written out, and their role fully acknowledged?

Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian, he has written six books, most recently Dispatches From the Diaspora. Winner of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Journalism and the 2025 Robert. B. Silvers Prize for Journalism, he has written for the New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ and The New Statesman, among others, and made radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. His fifth book, Another Day in the Death of America, won the J. Anthony Lukas Prize from Columbia School of Journalism and Nieman Foundation.

In partnership with: Libraries, Museums and Galleries University of Liverpool.