“I keep trying to write about utopia and end up writing about dystopia,” Sandra Newman, author of The Heavens, and The Country of Ice Cream Star has observed. Newman’s much anticipated Julia (October 2023), approved by Orwell’s estate, vividly reimagines the events of 1984 through the eyes of Winston Smith’s lover “..the girl from the Fiction Department”, rendering a feminist counterpoint to Orwell’s terrifying vision of a totalitarian future. Newman joins us to discuss feminist revision and what it means to imagine dystopia in these strange days.

In a special conversation with the critic Liesl Schillinger, the award-winning biographer of Orwell, D.J. Taylor, talks about his exploration of the life of this literary colossus, using all the tools of the biographer’s art, including newly-discovered source material, and conversations with the last few contemporaries of Orwell who are still alive. 

Featuring a short film by Sahm McGlynn, commissioned for the festival, featuring Waris Ahulwalia and inspired by “A Nice Cup of Tea”