Passiontide: A Reading and Conversation with Monique Roffey

Join us for an evening of reading and conversation with award-winning author Monique Roffey. We will be transported to the fictional island of St Calibri, as Monique reads from her celebrated recent novel Passiontide (2024) before unpacking some of the key themes from the book and her broader ouevre in a conversation with Dr Leighan Renaud around protest, feminism and the liberatory possibilities of Carnival.

Autumn is here, and for this year’s Art Lectures we have partnered with the University of Bristol’s Centre for Black Humanities! Bringing together a rich chorus of speakers, our new series invites you to consider the potential for liberation offered by creativity in all its forms. Across five events that will take us from the unexpected intersections of hip hop and gardening to the history and legacies of the Tudor court musician, John Blanke, we will examine the threads of power, protest and art-making that weave together across the work of artists, writers and musicians. Join us as we move from Bristol's Central Library to the RWA’s garden and from the local Jungle scene to celebrated novelist Monique Roffey’s imaginary island of St Calibri to celebrate artistic expression that challenges, uplifts, and liberates.

Find out more about the other events in the Autumn Art Lectures 2024: Creation & Liberation series. If you have any questions about this event or the series as a whole, please contact [email protected].

Monique Roffey, FRSL, is an award winning Trinidadian born British writer of novels, essays, literary journalism and a memoir. The Mermaid of Black Conch, won the Costa Book of the Year Award, 2020, and was nominated for eight other major awards. Her other Caribbean novels, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle and House of Ashes have also been nominated for awards. Archipelago won the OCM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature in 2013. Her work has been translated into many languages and adapted for screen. She is a co-founder of Writers Rebel within Extinction Rebellion. She is a Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University. Passiontide, her new novel, was published in June, 2024.

Host or Publisher Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol