Set in 412 BC in Sicily during the Peloponnesian war, Ferdia Lennon’s début novel, Glorious Exploits, explores the bonds forged between local out-of-work potters, Lampo and Gelon, and a group of starving Athenian prisoners of war, held captive in a quarry in Syracuse. This brilliantly boisterous novel culminates in their staging of Euripides’ tragedy Medea, a performance that they will never forget, as it becomes difficult to distinguish between friends and enemies. ‘It’s poetry we’re doing,’ Gelon says. ‘It wouldn’t mean a thing if it were easy.’
Ferdia Lennon will be in conversation with poet and playwright Clare Pollard, whose captivating début novel, Delphi, reads between the lines of ancient prophecies. In London in 2020 during the pandemic, the novel’s sharp, witty narrator, a Classics scholar, is attempting to write a book about prophecy in the ancient world and becomes fixated on our many forms of divination and prediction. ‘To write anything requires this ludicrous confidence in the future – that it exists, and contains a person who might read my words with interest.’ (Delphi)
Join us for a conversation that will touch on Greek tragedy, myth, war, death and more. It will be chaired by academic and dramaturg, Tanya Dean.
Ferdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Glorious Exploits is his first novel. A Sunday Times bestseller, it was adapted for BBC Radio 4 and was the winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024 and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. After spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son.
Clare Pollard is an award-winning poet and playwright based in London. She is the author of five poetry collections and the former Editor of the Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. Her first novel, Delphi, was published by Fig Tree in 2022. Her second novel, The Modern Fairies was published in 2024.
Clare Pollard’s sixth collection of poetry, Lives of the Female Poets, will be published by Bloodaxe in 2025. Her translations include Ovid’s Heroines, which she toured as a one-woman show with Jaybird Live Literature. She has also written a play, The Weather, performed at the Royal Court Theatre; a non-fiction title, Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books and a children’s novel, The Untameables. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and currently Artistic Director of the Winchester Poetry Festival.
Dr Tanya Dean is a Lecturer and Programme Coordinator for the B.A. (Hons) in Drama (Performance) in the Technological University Dublin Conservatoire. She completed her Doctor of Fine Arts with Yale School of Drama in 2016, where she also received her Master of Fine Arts in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism in 2011. Tanya has worked extensively as a freelance dramaturg on numerous scripts, workshops and productions in Ireland, the UK, the USA, and Iceland. From 2015-2017, Tanya served as a committee member for #WakingTheFeminists, and was a Research Associate on the report, Gender Counts: An Analysis Of Gender In Irish Theatre 2006-15. From 2020 to 2021 Tanya served as one of the judges for the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards. She is currently Script Associate for the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre.
