17th January 2011
After dinner talk at The Keys (Catholic Writers’ Guild): ‘Joan of Arc: Still struggling for her soul’, at St Mary Moorfields, London.

28-29th January 2011
‘Waking the Dead: Sublime poetics and popular culture in the aftermath of the French Revolution’.
A lecture for the Académie de France in Rome & Royal Dutch Institute Rome at the Villa Medicis, Rome. Opening keynote lecture: ‘Speaking Heads and Active Effigies: The Quickened Thing in ‘Les mille et une nuits’.

4th February 2011, 10.30-5.30pm
‘Shadow-Catchers Symposium’ at Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Artists, curators and writers assess the practice, content and legacy of camera-less photography.
The artists in the exhibition discuss their practice with invited speakers Marina Warner, Martin Kemp, Penny Black and Nigel Warburton.

7th February 2011, 11am
‘The Coming of the Shamam’, a lecture by MW at the department of Animation at Royal College of Art, London.

17th February 2011, 4:30pm
‘Dark Arts: Magicians in the Arabian Nights’ Departmental Seminar, Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies. Held at the University of Essex.

27th February 11:15am
MW gives the Bath Festival Opening Lecture: ‘The Flying Carpet’.

MW contributed the article ‘The Biography of the Banana’ for the Art Bulletin No. 90/2011.

MARCH

12th March 2011, 2-5.30
‘A Conference of Birds: “Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!”
Linking scientific, biological and ornithological writing with poetry and fiction. With Tim Dee, Claire Spottiswoode, Tobias Hill and others.
Held at the Lecture Theatre Building, University of Essex.

19th March 2011, 23:30 BBC Radio 4
MW interviewed for 'The Company of Poets' on BBC Radio 4. Susannah Clapp goes to the British Library to look at the poems in Angela Carter's journals, and her lists of the things that she was reading at the time she wrote them. More information here.

21st March 2011
‘Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates.’ To celebrate the new book edited by Bill Schwarz and Susannah Radstone: A day of thinking and talking, reading and discussing.’
Held at Queen Mary, University of London.

25-26th March 2011
'Myths and Fairy Tales in Film and Literature post-1900'
A two-day international conference hosted by the Film and Literature Programme of the Department of English and Related Literature in association with the Centre for Modern Studies. Keynote speakers are Professor Marina Warner, Professor Ian Christie and Dr Diane Purkiss. Held at University of York. More information can be found here.

29th March 2011
MW gives the talk 'Scheherazade's voice: Migrations and Meaning in Oriental Fabulism' at Auditorium Del Centro Linguistico, Universita Degli Studi Di Enna "Kore", Italy.
More information can be found here.

4th April 2011
Visit for reading and talk at Kore University, Enna, Sicily.

9th April 2011, 10-6:30pm
“Curiosity and Method” - Celebrating 10 years of Cabinet Magazine.
Cabinet Magazine Symposium at Betts Auditorium, Architecture Building, Princeton University, USA.
Marina Warner on pleasure. The symposium will be followed by a reception during which there will be a number of short readings from Cabinet’s first decade. Full list of speakers and all details here.

6th-8th May 2011
MW is giving a talk: “Word Magic: Scheherazade's Way”, inspired by The 1001 Nights: A Study of Enchantment at Poetry Next the Sea festival, Fakenham, Norfolk.

10th May 2011
MW gives a talk at The Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research (CTTR).

9th-12th June 2011
MW was a keynote speaker at 'Contradictory Woolf, The 21st Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf' at University of Glasgow, More information can be found here.

AUGUST

15th September 2011
‘Possible Worlds’. A Day Conference to celebrate Dame Gillian Beer and her Presidency of BCLA, 2004-2010.

9th October 2011, 2pm
‘The Voice of The Storyteller: Passion, Laughter, and Song in the Arabian Nights’ King’s Place, Hall Two, London.
Scheherazade is the principal storyteller, and she is telling stories to save her life and the life of all women. Inside her stories, many voices take up the thread of the book and begin to tell their own, and within this polyphony, there are outbursts of poetry - passionate erotic lyric, political squibs, and bawdy banter, quoted by the narrators often at moments of the greatest intensity in the plot.

This varied and exhilarating chorus of voices has inspired many composers to interpret oriental fairytale. Full details can be found here.

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12th October 2011, 4pm
‘L210 The Cheltenham Lecture: Marina Warner: The Arabian Nights’.
Magic is a way of dreaming the impossible; a state of thinking supremely demonstrated by The Arabian Nights, with their flying carpets, hidden treasures and sudden revelations.
Held at Montpellier Gardens as part of The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2011.
More details here.

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13th October 2011, 6-8:30pm
‘The White Review No.3’ London Launch with Marina Warner and Richard Wentworth at the Charing Cross Road Literary Event, held at The Gallery at Foyles, London.

To celebrate the launch of The White Review, a new arts and literature quarterly, sculptor Richard Wentworth will be in conversation with acclaimed writer and critic Marina Warner on contemporary art and literature in an evening of drinks and discussion moderated by White Review editors Benjamin Eastham and Jacques Testard.
Full details here.
Issue 3 of The White Review features an interview with MW, details of this issue can be found here.

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19th October 2011, 6:30pm
‘Marina Warner, Picture This – Writers Talks in The Courtauld Gallery’.
Somerset House Writer in Residence Frances Wilson invites you to Picture This.

Six eminent writers discuss their favourite work of art from The Courtauld Gallery’s permanent collection. Each evening the writers will present their personal reflections in a 20-minute talk, inspired by a painting from the remarkable collection of world-famous Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in The Courtauld Gallery.
Talks will be followed by a Q&A session and a chance to meet the writers. More details here.
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October 2011
MW was made an advisor on the International Advisory Board of the Library of Arabic Literature (LAL). For more information please see here.

NYU Press and NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have announced the establishment of the Library of Arabic Literature (LAL).
This new long-term project, funded by a grant from NYUAD’s research center, the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, will initially publish 35 English translations of the great works of classical Arabic literature.
The translations, rendered in parallel-text format with Arabic and English on facing pages, will be undertaken by renowned scholars of Arabic literature and Islamic studies. The translations will include a full range of works, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history and historiography.

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20th October 2011, 5:15pm
Marina Warner gives the Postgraduate Research Seminar ‘Inscribing power: Word magic, talismans, and the modern credit’ at The School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London.

Full details here and a link to the event programme can be found here.

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22nd October, 5-7pm
‘Enchantments in the Arabian Nights, or, The Life of the Jinn’ Part of the University of Cambridge’s Festival of Ideas 2011.

Jinn - or genies - are the agents of the drama in the stories of the Arabian Nights. They are angelic - and demonic. Made of fire and wind, they fly unaided and wingless through time and space. They are everywhere, invisible and visible, can tower to the skies or shrink into a bottle, marry humans and have children with them, wreak vengeance, turn into animals, and conjure vast fortunes into existence.

Their presence charms ordinary things. Solomon commands thousands of those who have repented, but others remain obdurate in their rebellion.

Why did stories featuring such capricious powers from the medieval Arabic literature of aja’ib (astonishing things) attract readers and audiences in the eighteenth century, the era of Enlightenment, when the Arabian Nights first appeared in print in translation?

Held at CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge. For booking information please see here.

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25th October 2011, 6:30-8pm
‘Mary: teenage mother, virgin, prophet’ Part of St Paul’s Cathedral Public Debates 2011 series.

Guest Speakers Professor Marina Warner and Dr Jane Williams (Tutor in Theology at St Mellitus College and Visiting Lecturer at King’s College London.
Her many books include Bread, Wine and Women, Perfect Freedom, Approaching Christmas and Faces of Christ) and a discussion with chair Canon Giles Fraser.

Mother of God and perpetual virgin, object of huge devotion and source of deep theological controversy: few figures in the Church’s history have divided opinion so starkly or so passionately. Is there a way for us to see Mary in her historic context, as a courageous woman with her own voice to whom God entrusts so much, and for which she suffers so greatly?And what does the story of this, the first apostle, say to us of our own lives of faith?

Due to the closure of St Paul's Cathedral this event was cancelled. Full details here.

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28th October 2011
MW contributes article to The Guardian: 'What St Paul's could learn from Mary, the patron of the Occupy protesters - Giles Fraser's resignation over Occupy London shows the church must engage with new forms of faith and belief. '
The article can be read here.

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29th October 2011, 10-6pm
MW will give a talk ‘“The Voice of the Turtle”: the Irresistible Love Lyrics of the Middle East’ as part of “Spreading the word,” 1611-2011: 400 Years of the King James Bible, A Study Day at the University of Essex, marking the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible.
This event is open to members of the public at a cost of £10.00.
More information can be found here.

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29th October 2011
MW contributed 'Visions of Alice: the little girl at the heart of Wonderland' an essay review on Alice in Wonderland at Tate Liverpool in The Guardian Review, 29 October 2011, pp16-17.
The article can be read here.

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2nd November 2011
MW contributed 'Inside the secret library where East meets West' an essay review of Alastair Hamilton's 'Western appreciation of Arab and Islamic civilization' published by Oxford University Press, in The Times Literary Supplement published 2nd November 2011.
The article can be read here

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2nd November 2011, 5.30-8pm
‘End of Empire and the English Novel’ A panel discussion jointly organised by Queen Mary, University of London and the British Academy.

The purpose of this discussion is to open up the connections between the end of the British Empire and the English novel. The main focus will be with English fiction more narrowly defined – Joseph Tey, John Masters, William Boyd, A S Byatt, Penelope Lively, Alan Hollinghurst, Ian McEwan and popular feminine romance. These authors are not conventionally read as postcolonial, but they have much of interest to say about the fate of England after the Empire. There has been no sustained discussion of these writers and their relationship to the end of the Empire. The discussion will illuminate both questions to do with the properties of the English novel, and with English history since 1945.
Held at The British Academy, London.

5.30pm-6.45pm
First session: The Issues End of Empire And the English Novel:
Bill Schwarz, Queen Mary, University of London (Chair)
Patrick Parrinder, University of Reading: ‘Cold War and the End of Empire in the late 1940s’. Rachel Gilmour, Queen Mary, University of London: ‘William Golding’, Suzanne Hobson, Queen Mary, University of London: Tim Parks 6.45pm-7.00pm Break. 7.00pm-8.00pm Second session: Responses Elleke Boehmer, University of Oxford (Chair)
Catherine Hall, University College London
Susheila Nasta, Open University, Marina Warner FBA, Novelist/University of Essex 5.30pm-8.00pm, followed by a reception.
More details can be found here.

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3rd November, 10am
MW is interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour about her recent book ‘Stranger Magic, Charmed States and the Arabian Nights'. 'Women and the Arabian Nights'.
The stories in the Arabian Nights feature a world of magic, genies, flying carpets, hidden treasures, evil spirits and iconic heroes. Translated into French and English in the early days of the Enlightenment, this Arabic collection of folk and fairy tales became a hugely popular especially tales such as Ali Baba and the forty thieves’ and ‘Aladdin’. At the heart is the heroic figure of Shahrazad, the teller of the tales. However, many of the women in the Arabian Nights are often seen as conniving, adulterous and even cruel.
To discuss this Jenni Murray is joined by Marina Warner, author of a new book ‘Stranger Magic, Charmed States and the Arabian Nights'.
Programme details and more information can be found here.

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7th November 2011, 2.30pm
Marina Warner in conversation with Daisy Goodwin at The Bridport Literary Festival, Dorset.
More details here. _________________________________________________________________

8th November 2011, 7.30pm
Marina Warner presents the Criticos Prize Award organised by the London Hellenic Society held at Great Hall, Hellenic Centre, London. Entrance by invitation.
More details here._________________________________________________________________

15th November 2011, 6:30pm
Walking between worlds: Tacita Dean's 'Footage', held at the University of Essex.

Marina Warner talks about her collaboration with Tacita Dean, ‘Footage’ and her research into the history and culture of shamans who through drumming, dreams, and dancing, access other worlds._________________________________________________________________

18th November 2011, 9.30-5pm
'The Wonder of Alice: Images, Myths and Realities' As part of Alice in Wonderland at Tate Liverpool 4th November 2011-29th January 2012.

This symposium offers a programme of sessions which will consider and reflect on the enduring appeal of Alice and the influence of her adventures on artistic thinking and practice. Alice’s journey of discovery prompts questions about the nature of childhood, identity and the imagination that have provided rich inspiration for artists. Focusing on the figure of Alice, speakers explore the symbolism of the stories and its relation to art theory and practice, and Alice’s contemporary relevance in the 21st century.

Chaired by Dr Josie Billington (University of Liverpool) an expert on Victorian literary realism, the panel includes Dame Gillian Beer, King Edward VII Professor Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, Dr Catherine Grant, Courtauld Institute of Art, Dr Juliet Hacking, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Dr Carol Mavor, Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester, Dr Robert Rowland Smith, Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, author and lecturer in philosophy, and Dr Marina Warner, Professor of Literature, Film and Theatre at the University of Essex.

Full details of this event can be found here.

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22nd November 22nd 2011, 7pm
Marina Warner talks about her new book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights at GV Art, 49 Chiltern Street London W1U 6LY.

Details can be found here. Map and contact details are here.

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24th November 2011, 7pm
Marina Warner gives talk at The Swedenborg Society, Bloomsbury, London.
Full details are here.

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26th November 2011
Marina Warner gives a talk at Richmond Literature Festival 2011.
More details here. A full pdf of the festival programme can be downloaded here.

November 2011
An interview with MW for the Run Riot website can be read here.

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28-29th November 2011

‘Myths Revisited’ Istanbul University organised by the Faculty of Letters, Department of English Language and Literature. Prof. Marina Warner, and Murathan Mungan, Turkish writer of fiction, are the keynote speakers at the 2nd International Conference.

Myths are almost as old as humanity and the aim of this conference is to explore myths in their manifold aspects. In ancient times myths constituted a vital part of art and life and indeed, art and life were closely intertwined and almost inseparable. Drama emerged and developed during the festivals held in honour of Dionysus and classic tragedy commonly revolved around the fate of mythical characters. Not only on temples and ancient vases or in classical epic literature do we find representations of mythical stories, but throughout the history of art, artists have constantly had recourse to myth. Myth has even served to explain human psychology as in the case of Sigmund Freud and his theory of the Oedipus Complex.

A close look at contemporary art reveals that myth still maintains its vital force, because a great number of contemporary artists engage with myths and integrate them into their works. This inter-disciplinary conference seeks to investigate and explore the nature and significance of myth and its impact on diverse fields of art such as literature, drama, film or painting. To encourage innovative dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from diverse disciplines and professions.

The conference is held at Istanbul University, Rector’s Building, Beyazit – Istanbul, Turkey.
For more information please see here. A copy of the programme notes can be downloaded here.

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