IMAGES, WILDERNESS AND LYRICISM:

IN CONVERSATION WITH SARA BAUME

Moderated by Tom Clifford

Tuesday, March 20, 8 pm | 60 RMB 

In Sara Baume’s multi award-winning debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, a 57-year-old misfit, who is “too old for starting over, too young for giving up” takes in a one-eyed, vicious dog that no one else would take. As the seasons pass their relationship grows and as their life is thrown into turmoil a profound story of loss, loneliness and friendship emerges in what was hailed as “a stunning and wonderful achievement by a writer touched by greatness.” In Sara’s latest novel, A Line Made by Walking, a young artist retreats to a rural bungalow as she tries to regain her footing in art and life. Finding little comfort in human interaction, she turns her camera lens on the natural world and its reassuring cycle of life and death. What emerges is a profound meditation on the interconnectedness of wilderness, art and individual experience, and a powerful exploration of human frailty. A visual artist and writer from the south west coast of Ireland, Sara Baume “is a writer of outstanding grace and style. She writes beyond the time we live in,” according to National Book Award winner Colum McCann. Sara will be in conversation with Tom Clifford, a Senior Editor with China Daily.

Sara Baume’s debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and is currently being translated into a dozen different languages. Her second novel, A Line Made by Walking, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2017. She is recipient of a literary fellowship from the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and lives on the south west coast of Ireland, where she works as a visual artist as well as a writer. Brought to you with the kind support of Literature Ireland and the Irish Embassy, Beijing. 

Tom Clifford is a Senior Editor with China Daily. During his three-decade career, Tom has covered the fall of Marcos, the invasion and liberation of Kuwait, South Africa before Mandela became president, the Hong Kong handover, spent time as a non-embedded journalist, in Iraq and freelanced in South America.