Tony Birch and Dorothea Smartt in Conversation

Edinburgh International Book Festival Review

In Partnership with the Royal Society of Literature we welcome Brit-born Bajan performance artist and poet, Dorothea Smartt in conversation with leading literary luminaries Tony Birch.

Both writers create works filled with beauty and both incorporate underrepresented traditions and experiences across their writing.

Dorothea Smartt's poetry carries her ‘two voices’, the ‘London voice’ of standard English and her ‘Bajan voice’ – the voice of her childhood and her dreams.

Tony Birch's writing conveys the power of kinship ties sustained in a context of the world's oldest continuous culture.

The conversation will be chaired by Deirdre Osborne, Professor of Literature and Drama in English at Goldsmiths, University of London. Co-founder, MA Black British Literature

Tony Birch will be in the UK for the Edinburgh International Book Festival and this will be his only London event.

About the series: BLAK [*] to Black

First Nations/BLAK writers’ literature is still not easily obtainable for UK readers.

Brook Garru Andrew and Jessica Neath observe, ‘This invisibility affects both First Nations peoples and the wider public in Australia and overseas, reiterating that we are indeed “alone” even to Black movements elsewhere… ’ BLAK to Black is a series established by Deirdre Osborne, which brings together a First Nations author and a Black British author in conversation, showing just how literature is a pipeline to a wealth of histories and never-ending stories - igniting our imaginations, appealing to our emotions, changing our perspectives.

*The term ‘BLAK’ is used for the series with permission from late Destiny Deacon, descendent of the Kuku Cape York and Erub/Mer Torres Strait peoples who coined it in 1991.

Tony Birch, selected as an RSL International Writer in 2023 and described as a ‘master craftsman of fiction’ is a pre-eminent short storyteller, a novelist, as well as essayist, poet and internationally renowned expert in climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty. Among his many accolades is the prestigious Patrick White Literary Award in 2017.

Dorothea Smartt, FRSL literary activist, live artist, and established poet with an international reputation. She has two full collections, Connecting Medium and Ship Shape Peepal Tree Press. Her recent chapbook, Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On, “…is subversive, radical, and surprisingly panoramic.