Two best selling authors in conversation

This is an online only event hosted on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a viewing link shortly before the event and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time. The online version of this event will be live captioned. Please note this event will no longer take place in the British Library Theatre.

A chance to meet two best-selling British novelists who have gained devoted audiences for their darkly funny and charming explorations of the habits and mysteries of ordinary people. At this unique event they discuss their writing lives and their latest books with memoirist Cathy Rentzenbrink.

Joanna Cannon is the psychiatrist doctor turned author of the acclaimed The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie, which she now follows with A Tidy Ending, a delightfully sinister novel about a married woman living a nice, quiet suburban life – but where things aren’t always what they seem.

Nina Stibbe has been called ‘one of the great comic writers of our time' (Irish Times) for her multi award-winning books including the memoir Love, Nina and the and Reasons to be Cheerful. Her latest is One Day I Shall Astonish the World, the story of the wonderful and surprising path of friendship.

This event will be followed by a book signing.

Online event bookers can buy a copy of either Joanna’s A Tidy Ending or Nina’s One Day I Shall Astonish the World with a ticket at checkout and watch the event for free. Books will be posted out within seven days after the event. Please ensure your address is up to date on your British Library account.

Praise for A Tidy Ending

‘Compellingly creepy, with precisely observed characterisation, A Tidy Ending combines pathos with lovely ashes of humour and a wholly unexpected ending’
- Guardian

‘Wonderfully creepy and claustrophobic – a curtain-twitching, darkly funny tale with a gloriously sinister twist’
- Observer

Praise for One Day I Shall Astonish the World

'Joyful. Stibbe's comedy probes what it means to become an adult'
- Daily Telegraph

'Funny, charming, odd-in-the-best-way and gorgeously uplifting! A delight from start to finish'
- Marian Keyes

About the speakers

Joanna Cannon left school at 15, returning to study in her 30s and qualifying as a doctor specialising in psychiatry. Her first two novels The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and Three Things about Elsie were Sunday Times bestsellers and Richard and Judy picks, and her books have sold just under a million copies in the UK alone. Her non-fiction book, Breaking and Mending, a memoir about her experience as a junior doctor, was published in 2019 to critical acclaim.

Nina Stibbe was born in Leicester. She is the author of two works of non-fiction - Love, Nina and An Almost Perfect Christmas - and three previous novels: Man at the Helm, Paradise Lodge, and Reasons to be Cheerful, which is the only novel to have won both the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the Comedy Women in Print Award. Love, Nina won Non-Fiction Book of the Year and was adapted by Nick Hornby into a BBC TV series. Nina Stibbe lives in Cornwall.

Cathy Rentzenbrink is an acclaimed memoirist whose books include The Last Act of Love and Dear Reader. In 2021 she published her first novel Everyone is Still Alive. Her book about how to write a memoir is called Write It All Down and is out now. Cathy regularly chairs literary events, interviews authors, reviews books, runs creative writing courses and speaks and writes on life, death, love, and literature. Despite being shortlisted for various prizes, the only thing Cathy has ever won is the Snaith and District Ladies’ Darts Championship when she was 17. She is now sadly out of practice.

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