Event Details

  • Date:
  • Venue: The Atlantis Bookshop
  • 49a Museum Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1A 1LY, UK

John Cowper Powys: A Magician Between Worlds

The Gardener Room at The Atlantis Bookshop

Tickets £10

We are delighted to be welcoming Dr Kevan Manwaring back to The Atlantis Bookshop for this in-person Evening with…

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of the novelist John Cowper Powys, Dr Kevan Manwaring re-examines his influences, oeuvre, and legacy with a special focus on his ‘Wessex Quartet’ of novels (Maiden Castle; Weymouth Sands; A Glastonbury Romance; Wolf Solent). Written with the ‘inkblood of home’ while he was a lecturer in America, we’ll consider the importance of place and the Welsh concept of ‘hiraeth’ in his writing, and what he called ‘the magical view of life.’

Dr Kevan Manwaring is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Arts University Bournemouth. A BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers 2022 finalist, his research focuses on fantasy, ecology and eco-fiction. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is the author of ‘The Long Woman’, ‘Lost Islands’, ‘Desiring Dragons’, and editor of ‘Heavy Weather: tempestuous tales of stranger climes’ (The British Library) as well as collections of folk tales for The History Press. An academic consultant for BBC 4’s The Secret Life of Books and contributor to ‘Free Thinking’ (BBC Radio 3), he blogs and tweets as the Bardic Academic.