Jasbinder-bilan-2020-photo-by-ian-sharp

Image credit: Ian Sharp ©

Jasbinder Bilan

School events

The following event is for school audiences and is not open to the public. Tickets are £2 per child, with one free adult ticket with every ten children’s tickets. Additional adult tickets are £8. To make a school booking, contact Ben O'Donnell

Jasbinder Bilan

Nush and the Stolen Emerald

10am Monday 31 March 2025/ Sheldonian Theatre

Join Costa Award-winning author Jasbinder Bilan for an inspiring talk around her new novel, Nush and the Stolen Emerald. In this interactive and visual event, students will learn about the inspiration behind Jasbinder’s books, her journey to becoming an award-winning writer, and hear Jasbinder read a snippet from her story.

Jasbinder was born in a stable in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her debut novel, Asha & the Spirit Bird, won the 2019 Costa Book Award, and was inspired by the bond she shares with her grandmother. Jasbinder lives in Bath with her husband and two teenage sons.

Tickets are £2 per child and one free adult ticket is supplied with every ten children’s tickets. Additional adult tickets are £8.

Suitable for age 8-12. To book or for more information contact ben.k.odonnell@gmail.com

Festival information:

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

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