Writer's Talk: Lynsey Hanley

bristol | media and culture | event notice Tuesday January 04, 2011 16:54 by Spike Island admin at spikeisland dot org dot uk 133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX 0117 929 2266

Author and journalist Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe. Her first book Estates: an intimate history, published by Granta (2007), recounts the rise of social housing a century ago and its decline in the 1960s and ‘70s. Join us for a relaxed evening during which Hanley will read from and discuss Estates as well as expand upon her wider research into economic, social and spatial segregation, and the role played by education in social mobility.

Author and journalist Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe. Her first book Estates: an intimate history, published by Granta (2007), recounts the rise of social housing a century ago and its decline in the 1960s and ‘70s. Estates is both a compelling social study and an intimate, humorous memoir charting Hanley’s own negotiation of the British class system.

Join us for a relaxed evening during which Hanley will read from and discuss Estates as well as expand upon her wider research into economic, social and spatial segregation, and the role played by education in social mobility.

This event has been programmed in response to Spike Island's upcoming exhibition, Maelfa by artist Sean Edwards. In Maelfa, a mixed media installation, Edwards has made a direct study of a 1970s municipal shopping centre on the outskirts of Cardiff, focusing on its disappearing communities and failed utopian aspirations as well as his own autobiographical relationship to this apparently marginal site.

Lysney Hanley is based in London and is currently working on her second book. As well as being an Honorary Research Fellow at Lancaster University, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Demos advisory council. She contributes commentary pieces, arts features and book reviews to the Guardian and the New Statesman, and has written for the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement,Prospect, RSA Journal, the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, and the Sunday Times. She also regularly appears on broadcast media including BBC2’s Newsnight and most recently presented three episodes of Wall in the Mind on BBC Radio 4 exploring the contemporary class divide in Britain.

Tickets are £4 full, £2 concession (Spike Island studioholders, Spike Associates, students, over-60s and disabled people). Please reserve your place by calling 0117 9292266 or emailing admin@spikeisland.org.uk and pay on the door.