The New Craftsmen is very excited to present an evening with British author and short story writer Sara Maitland. The evening will be held in collaboration with Pin Drop – a highly-regarded literary organisation which presents leading authors and actors reading short stories against the backdrop of iconic and unique locations.

Known for her verve for blending non-fiction and fable, Sara Maitland will be reading three newly-penned short stories based on the genre of Fairy Tales and written exclusively for The New Craftsmen, using the rich heritage of the craft products, traditions and skills of our makers as inspiration and motifs for the stories.

Where: The evening will take place at The New Craftsmen Showroom, 34 North Row, London, W1K 6DG.
When: Guests are invited to arrive from 6.30pm. The readings will begin at 7pm followed by an audience Q&A with the author led by The New Craftsmen
Tickets: Tickets are priced at £10 and include a complimentary glass of wine (all profit will go to charity)

Sara Maitland’s first novel Daughter of Jerusalem won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1979. Since then she has written five more novels and five collections of short stories, including On Becoming a Fairy Godmother (Maia Press 2003).

In 2004 she moved to Galloway and built herself a house on the moors above Stranraer where she lives alone (except for Zoe, her sort-of-border-terrier) exploring the richness of silence and solitude. She wrote A Book of Silence, (Granta 2008) partly a cultural history of silence and partly a personal memoir of her own search for that elusive lifestyle. More recently she has published Gossip from the Forest (Granta, 2012), about forests and fairy stories; and Mosswitch and other stories (Commas Press 2014) inspired by conversations with scientists, and including short essays by them on the experience of having their work turned into fiction and How to be Alone(Pan 2014). Much of her work explores contemporary versions of old stories, myths, legends and fairy tales.

She teaches on the MA in Creative writing (by distance learning) for Lancaster University and writes monthly columns for the Tablet and for the BBC’s Countryfile Magazine.

“Pin Drop is a wonderfully innovative scheme that unites the written arts with the visual. In iconic venues like the Royal Academy, new and established writers have their works read, discussed and questioned by enthusiastic audiences. The presence of the written word in public spaces filled with visual art reminds writers, whose work is so often private and inward, of the capacity of literature to reach out, uniting it with the family of all the arts where it belongs. I really believe in Pin Drop and felt immensely rewarded to be involved.” Stephen Fry

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