Writing home and other places: newness in the back yard of our life

Free, booking essential
Tue 29 Sep, doors at 6.30pm
The Great Hall at Queen's
We are delighted to welcome Deborah Levy to the Great Hall for her first talk as the Seamus Heaney Visiting International Professor for Creative Writing.

Deborah Levy is a novelist and playwright. Her novels include the Booker-shortlisted Swimming Home (2011) and Hot Milk (2016), The Man Who Saw Everything (2019) and August Blue (2023). Hot Milk was made into a major motion film starring Fiona Shaw and Emma Mackey, released in 2025.

Deborah is also the author of a collection of short stories, Black Vodka , and a trilogy of prize-winning Living Autobiographies: Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate.

She has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for BBC Radio 4, Deborah wrote two acclaimed dramatizations of Freud’s most famous case studies, ‘Dora’ and ‘The Wolf Man’; other Radio 4 dramatizations include Carol Shields’ last novel, Unless, (10 episodes), Katherine Mansfield’s short story collection, In a German Pension, and Colette’s novella, Chance Acquaintances. Her most recent play, 50 Minutes, premiered at Theater Neumarkt, Zurich, in January 2025.

Deborah was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991; AHRB Fellow at The Royal College of Art 2006-09 where she taught writing in the Animation Department, and Visiting Professor in Writing at Falmouth University 2012–15. Her books are widely translated around the world and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Established through philanthropy, the Visiting International Chair for Creative Writing is part of the University’s recent development project which included the Seamus Heaney Centre’s move to their landmark building in 2024 and enhanced public and outreach programming. The Seamus Heaney Visiting International Chair of Creative Writing is a philanthropy-funded post that will bring a visiting professor to the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s for one semester of the academic year in each of the next six years.