Event type: Talk

 

Join #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Juno Dawson for a special online event celebrating the release of her explosive new YA novel, Survival Show.

Set inside the world’s most-watched – and most sinister – reality TV competition, Survival Show follows a teenage contestant who risks everything to expose the brutal regime behind the spectacle. In this live conversation, Juno will explore the themes driving the novel: fame and exploitation, poverty and power, media manipulation and the cost of visibility in a culture obsessed with performance.

Blending high-stakes dystopian drama with razor-sharp social commentary, the book reflects on a world where young women’s lives become content and entertainment masks control. Juno will discuss why dystopia feels so close to home, how reality TV mirrors political reality, and what it means to write boldly for young readers at a time of growing censorship and backlash.

As the author of global bestsellers including This Book Is Gay and Clean – works that have been both widely celebrated and repeatedly targeted in waves of LGBTQ+ book bans – Juno is able to bring insight and urgency to conversations about storytelling, representation and resistance.

Expect an incisive, politically charged discussion about culture, control and the power of fiction to challenge the systems shaping our lives.

Juno Dawson is a #1 Sunday Times bestselling novelist, screenwriter, journalist and columnist for Attitude magazine. Her books include the global bestsellers This Book Is Gay and Clean. She also writes for television and has multiple shows in development in both the UK and US.

Juno grew up in West Yorkshire, writing imaginary episodes of Doctor Who, before turning her talent to journalism, interviewing pop luminaries such as Steps and Atomic Kitten and writing a weekly serial in a Brighton newspaper. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, The Pool, Dazed and The Guardian, and she has appeared on Pointless Celebrities, BBC Woman’s Hour, ITV News, Channel 5 News, This Morning and Newsnight.

She lives in Brighton and is part of the queer cabaret collective Club Silencio. In 2014, she became a School & College Role Model for the charity Stonewall.

Date: Wednesday 20th MayTime: 7pmOnline eventTickets: £5

 

Join internationally acclaimed writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit for a special online event exploring her powerful new book- The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change. 

In this urgent and illuminating work, Solnit argues that while climate breakdown, democratic erosion and the rise of authoritarian politics dominate the headlines, they do not tell the whole story. Beneath the turbulence, she traces what she calls a “slow revolution”: the patient, persistent work of movements and communities reshaping the world in ways reactionary forces cannot tolerate. 

With clarity and moral force, Solnit explores how change often begins quietly before it becomes visible; how despair narrows our political imagination; and how the myth of inevitability serves those invested in the status quo. Drawing on decades of activism and feminist and climate justice thought, she reframes hope not as naïve optimism, but as a disciplined commitment to possibility. 

In this online conversation, Solnit will reflect on contested futures, collective action and why new worlds are already emerging – even in moments of backlash. 

A timely and galvanising event with one of the most influential public thinkers of our time. 

Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Orwell’s Roses, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Orwell Prize for political writing, Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the 2021 James Tait Black Award, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, A Paradise Built in Hell and Hope in the Dark. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis, and writes regularly for the Guardian. 

A longtime climate and human rights activist, she serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act. Her newsletter of essays and analyses can be found at meditationsinanemergency.com