{related_entries id="evnt_auth_1"} {/related_entries} and {related_entries id="evnt_auth_2"} {/related_entries} talk to {related_entries id="evnt_chair"} {/related_entries}

Booker-shortlisted author Neel Mukherjee and Bodley’s librarian Richard Ovenden talk to critic and writer Erica Wagner about the author Alan Garner whose work is celebrated in a new collection of essays, First Light.

First Light is an anthology edited by Wagner that celebrates the work of Garner, whose fiction has transformed the way so many readers and writers think about literature and landscape. The Bodleian acquired Garner’s literary archive in 2004. The talk will offer unique insights into the work of a writer who has found his rightful place among Oxford authors such as C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien, Joyce Cary, T E Lawrence, Barbara Pym and Philip Pullman. Ovenden and Mukherjee have both contributed to First Light.

Ovenden is Bodley’s librarian and has also worked as deputy librarian and as keeper of special collections. Mukherjee’s second novel, The Lives of Others, was shortlisted for the Booker prize, and his first, Past Continuous, was joint winner of India’s top award for writing in English, the Vodafone-Crossword Award. Wagner is consulting literary editor of Harper’s Bazaar and was literary editor of The Times between 1996 and 2013.