Post-Now: Synthetic futures in fiction

We all know that novels are more than just stories; they often tell us about our lives and ourselves. This talk by Guy Mankowski  will consider how writers have taken fiction to its limit by questioning how we live now and how we might live in the future. Guy’s novel How I Left The National Grid examined how, in postmodern culture, subculture and nostalgia offer people some room to shape the world they want to live in. From the future societies described in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go to the exotic technologies in JG Ballard’s Vermilion Sands, this session will also look at how literary fiction has imagined - and proposed - synthetic futures.


Dr Guy Mankowski is the author of four novels: Letters from Yelena (Legend Press) was awarded an Arts Council Literature grant, used in GCSE training material by Osiris in 2015, and adapted for the stage. How I Left The National Grid (Zer0 Books) was written as part of a PhD in Creative Writing and published in the UK, US and Canada. His fourth novel, An Honest Deceit (Urbane Publications) was awarded an Arts Council Literature grant, longlisted for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize, and adapted for Audible.



Wednesday 9 May 2018
4-5pm
Reg Vardy 213, St Peters Campus, Sunderland
Free refreshments
Open to all

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