The week ahead in literary London
Wednesday: Homework is back! Head to Bethnal Green Working Men's Club to hear work on a conspiracy theme from Tim Clare, Ross Sutherland, Luke Wright, Joe Dunthorne and John Osborne (7.30pm, £5).
Stewart Ferriss is at London Writers' Club talking about independent publishers (7pm, £10).
Romesh Gunesekera helps launch the First Story anthology from Highgate Wood School (email info [at] firststory.co.uk).
Niall Ferguson looks at what might have been, had the world taken some different paths, at the British Library (6.30pm, £7.50 / £5).
George Szirtes, Jane Draycott, Sundeep Sen, Jenny Lewis, Frances Kiernan, William Radice, Sangeeta Datta, Mukulika Banerjee, Shirin Razavian, Natasha Dabeski and Leona Medlin perform at the Nehru Centre (6.30pm).
Thursday: Philip Pullman opens the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre (7.30pm, £14 / £10).
It's an all star party at Bang Said the Gun (8pm, £5).
Tongue Fu at Rich Mix welcomes Elvis McGonagall, Maria Slovakova and Anthony Anaxagorou (8pm, £7 / £5).
Hayley Campbell goes on an autobiographical tour of horror comics at the Big Green Bookshop (7pm, £3).
David Harsent and Aviva Dautch read at the launch of the new Poetry Review, at Foyles (6.30pm, £8 / £6).
Alasdair Paterson, Caleb Klaces, Claire Crowther and Laura Seymour are the Flarestack Poets reading at the Bell on Middlesex Street (7pm, £4).
The Farrago Summer SLAM features Fran Landesman, Rachel Pantechnicon, Harry Baker, Hamza Beg, Joelle Taylor and Eleanor Hough (7.30pm, £6 / £5).
Betty Davis hosts Niall O'Sullivan, Amy Acre and Tom Bland for some Shadows in the City (7.30pm, £5).
Friday: Tons happening at the London Literature Festival: a production of Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry (7.45pm, £20 / £15); poet Tiffany Anne Tondut on the vintage craze (1pm, free); Poejazzi with Joshua Idehen, Musa Okwonga and Inua Ellams (5.30pm, free); James Harkin and Mark Leckey on adopting subcultures for mainstream marketing (7pm, £8); Gilbert and George (7.30pm, £14 / £10); and Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley on Britain's post-industrial landscapes (7.45pm, £8).
Join Utter! in raising funds for the British Heart Foundation and Cardiomyopathy Association. Kevin Eldon, Robert Auton, Zena Edwards and Richard Tyrone-Jones are on the bill at the Drayton Court Hotel (7.30pm, £10).
Keep an eye on Penned in the Margins for news about something happening with Gemma Seltzer's book, Speak to Strangers...
Kat Francois hosts SLAM Intimates at the Poetry Cafe (8pm, £5 / £3).
Amy Rhodes is telling stories about Richmond residents past at The Tea Box (7.30pm, £6).
Ruth O'Callaghan hosts the latest Camden Poetry Series with Anne Ballard, Miriam Halahmy and Sami al Mahdi (7pm, £5 / £4).
Saturday: Back at the Southbank Centre for the London Literature Festival: Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Shumon Basar and Saskia Sassen ponder whether London could lose its world-city status (1pm, £8); Owen Jones talks about his book Chavs (4pm, £8); and there's Clare Solomon on the student protests (7.45pm, £8).
Meanwhile, at the Bromley Literary Festival, Lucy Worsley talks about her book on the history of the home (11.30am, £3), there's comic making at 10am (£3) and Christie Watson and Yvette Edwards discuss writing realistic, diverse, fiction (12.45pm, £3).
Staying south-east, the Sydenham Arts Festival gears up with Andrew Motion, Aoife Mannix and Ronnie McGrath (7.30pm, £12 / £9).
John Hegley and guests drop by the Poetry Cafe for Elevenses (11am, £6 / £5).
Sunday: The big hitters come out for the London Literature Festival: Alexander McCall Smith (1pm, £10); Michael Cunningham (4pm, £10); Michael Morpurgo (11.30am, £8 / £4); Neal Ascherson and James Marriot debate the future of oil in Europe (1pm, £8); poets Kate Clanchy, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Nick Laird and Owen Sheers pick poems that map contemporary Britain (7pm, £10). There's also a creative writing workshop at 2pm (£14).
For Books' Sake present a couple of events at the Bromley Literary Festival: a celebration of punk heritage with Lucy O’Brien, Zoë Howe, Annette Barlow and Jane Bradley (5pm) and a literary pub quiz (7pm, £4 per event or £6 for both).
Take the kids to Harrow to hear stories, poems and songs with Australian Rosie Harris and her animal chums (11.30am / 2pm, £8 / £6).
Enjoy an afternoon with Gyles Brandreth at the London Wetland Centre (3pm, £25 / £20).
Myra Schneider, Sue Rose, Wendy Klein, NS Thompson, Nicola Warwick, Derek Sellen, Lee Duggan and Susan Utting all read at Pages of Hackney for the launch of Cinnamon Press's new anthology, Kaleidoscope (2pm, free).
Monday: Michael Cunningham talks about his work at King's College (7pm; this is a Royal Society of Literature event - there are always some tickets for the public available on the door from 6pm, £8 / £5).
At the London Literature Festival: Lisa Appignanesi talks about love to Hanif Kureishi (7.45pm, £10); the Southbank Book Club looks at Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men (6.30pm, free); the Polari salon is at 8pm (£8), with DJ Connell, Tim Arthur, Tim Brady, Timothy Graves, VG Lee and William Parker.
Robin Blackburn considers human rights and revolutions, at the London Review Bookshop (7pm, £7).
Jennifer Langer hosts Exiled Writers Ink at the Poetry Cafe (8pm, £4 / £2), with writers from Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
South-East London Stanza presents Poetry by the Park at Oliver's Music Bar, Greenwich (7.30pm, free).
Tuesday: John Sutherland and Alan Jenkins debate Stephen Spender's legacy, at the Free Word Centre (6.30pm, £8 / £5).
Also at the Free Word Centre, Leaf Fielding launches his memoir To Live Outside the Law (6pm, £5).
At the London Literature Festival: the Southbank Book Club discusses The Line of Beauty (6.30pm, free); Hisham Matar reads from his new book Anatomy of a Disappearance (7pm, £8); Nikesh Shukla tells short stories about immigration and nationalism (7pm, £8).
Grant Morrison talks Supergods and comic books at Foyles (6.30pm, free but reserve in advance).
Steve Sem-Sandberg discusses the Lódz Ghetto at the London Review Bookshop (7pm, £7).
Niall O'Sullivan hosts Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Cafe (7.30pm, £4 / £3).
Follow @LondonistLit for our pick of that day’s literary events
