Sons, Mothers and the Frozen South

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This event will be held in English.

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Carys Davies will talk about the way real life crashes into the making of fiction, about the writing of her new novel-in-progress, and how writing about the past is a way of worrying about the present.

Carys Davies is a novelist and short story writer based in Edinburgh. Her short story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike won The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Her debut novel, West, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second, The Mission House, was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel of the Year. Her third, Clear, won the 2025 RSL Ondaatje Prize and the 2025 Wales Book of the Year, and has been nominated for several others, including the Europese Literatuurprijs, Scotland’s National Book Award, the Walter Scott Prize, and the Winston Graham Prize.

The Rendez-Vous de l’Institut Series is generously supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

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Host or Publisher Institute for Ideas and Imagination