Amber Medland’s Wild Pets (‘a wickedly funny and emotionally complex novel’ – Jenny Offill) and Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation (‘poignant, poetic, raw and utterly unique’ – Pandora Sykes) are searing depictions of what it is to be young and lost as women navigating sex, relationships, creative ambition and mental health in New York and Dublin respectively. Both visceral, bold, beautifully written and, at once, witty and devastating, these debut novels mark the arrival of two major talents on the literary landscape. In conversation with writer and critic Chris Power, they discuss writing the zeitgeist, sex, the city and the search for self.

Amber Medland read English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She has written for London Review of Books, Paris Review, TLS, The New Yorker, FT, Guardian, Telegraph, and The Drift. She lives in London and is an alumnus of The London Library Emerging Writers Programme. 

Megan Nolan lives in London and was born in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays, fiction and reviews have been published in the New York Times, White Review, Sunday Times, Village Voice, Guardian and in the literary anthology, Winter Papers. She writes a fortnightly column for the New Statesman. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2022.

Chris Power is the author of a novel, A Lonely Man, and a collection of short stories, Mothers, which was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. He teaches postgraduate creative writing at Goldsmiths College in London, and can sometimes be heard presenting Open Book on BBC Radio 4.

Wild Pets by Amber Medland, Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan and A Lonely Man by Chris Power can all be ordered from our partner bookshop Hatchards. 

N.B. This event will take place in person at The London Library in alignment with up-to-date government COVID recommendations. Please see our Event Access and COVID Guidelines before you arrive. Doors (and the bar) open at 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start.

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