Authors Liza Klaussmann and Benjamin Markovits and academic and critic John Sutherland discuss the colossus that is American fiction – is it bigger, brighter, better than its counterparts?

Klaussmann, great-great-great granddaughter of Herman Melville, worked as a journalist for the New York Times for over a decade and is now based in London. Her acclaimed first novel, Tigers in Red Weather, was published in 2012. Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin. His novels include The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter, Imposture, A Quiet Adjustment, and Childish Loves, the last three a fictionalised trilogy about the life of Byron. Markovits teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Sutherland is the Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus at University College, London, and author of many books, including Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives. He has edited literary texts for the Folio Society. Sutherland was for several years visiting professor at California Institute of Technology.

The discussion is chaired by Robert Hewison, theatre and arts writer for The Sunday Times, and author of some 20 books in the field of 19th and 20th-century cultural history. His most recent work, with Chris Orr, is Chris Orr: The Making of Things.

This event is part of a series organised in partnership with the Folio Society.