Crafting Immersive Worlds

Samantha Shannon in conversation with Kate Dylan

Saturday, 5 April 2025

6:00pm

1 hour

Pusey House: Chapel

£8 - £15

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Acclaimed author of the bestselling Bone Season series Samantha Shannon talks about the fifth instalment, Dark Mirror, and the craft of writing fantasy in conversation with video editor and fantasy wriuter Kate Dylan.

Shannon and Dylan will delve into the realms of fantasy and the art of crafting immersive worlds, exploring the creative processes behind their works.

Shannon is author of The Bone Season and The Roots of Chaos series. Her work has been translated into 28 languages. The Priory of the Orange Tree sold more than a million copies worldwide. Dylan is a video editor by day, and science fiction and fantasy author by night. Her debut fantasy novel, Until We Shatter, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

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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.

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.

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

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.

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.

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.

I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

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