Ali Smith and Gillian Beer: After Sebald, London Review Bookshop

To celebrate the publication of After Sebald, a collection of essays reflecting upon the German writer's lasting legacy, the London Review Bookshop is hosting a literary discussion featuring two of the volume's contributors, Ali Smith and Gillian Beer and hosted by editor Jon Cook. 
After Sebald: Essays and Illuminations
Over a decade since Sebald's death, this new volume offers a variety of responses and perspectives on his writing and its influence on the international canon. The Emmigrants, a genre-busting meditation on the holocaust interspersing history, biography fiction and photography, captivated readers around the word. Sebald went on to become one of the world's most distinguished writers, hotly-tipped for the Nobel Prize, before his tragic premature death (aged 57).
The breadth of his legacy upon literature is evident from the diverse variety of writers that cite Sebald as an influence. Contributers to this collection of essays include Robert MacFarlane, Will Self and J.M Coetzee.

Ali Smith will explore the art of translation in Sebald's work. She's master literary craftswoman, whose most recent novel, Booker-Shortlisted How to be Both was shaped by an ingeniously playful fusion of genre and form; it will be fascinating to hear how Smith is influenced by Sebald's innovative mix of biography and fiction. Literary critic Gillian Beer, whose lectures are so engaging and insightful they tend to sellout, is a bonafide expert on both classic and contemporary literature, having headed a Cambridge college, twice judged the Man Booker Prize and penned studies on writers ranging from Lewis Carroll to Virginia Woolf. It will be enlightening to consider Sebald within the broader scope of literary criticism. Jon Cook, editor of After Sebald, will host the discussion. As Professor of Literature and Director of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, he will also share his experiences as a friend and colleague of Sebald.