5x15

Emma Gannon is a Sunday Times bestselling author, speaker, novelist and host of the award-winning creative careers podcast in the UK, Ctrl Alt Delete, which has reached almost 10 million downloads. She has blogged since 2009; podcasted since 2016 and is the author of five books, including her award-winning debut novel OLIVE. Her new book Disconnected will be published in January 2022 in the UK and US. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

5x15 presents: Isabel Allende - novelist, feminist & philanthropist - in conversation about her new novel Violeta with journalist Alex Clark Isabel Allende is one of the most widely-read authors in the world, having sold more than 75 million books which have been translated into 42 languages. Join 5x15 for this exclusive launch event for her unmissable new novel Violeta. Allende won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Since then, she has authored more than twenty-five bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune, Island Beneath the Sea, Paula, The Japanese Lover, A Long Petal of the Sea, and her most recent memoir, The Soul of a Woman. Allende’s works always entertain and educate readers interweaving imaginative stories with significant historical events. Her new novel is the epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920. Violeta recounts devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy, and a life shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humour will carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional. In addition to her work as a writer, Allende devotes much of her time to human rights causes. She has received fifteen honorary doctorates, including one from Harvard University, was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, received the PEN Center Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Allende the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Alex Clark is a critic, journalist and broadcaster who lives in London, and has been Artistic Director for Words and Literature at the Bath Festival. She writes on a wide range of subjects for the Guardian, the Observer, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. She has judged many literary awards, including the 2008 Man Booker prize. She regularly chairs live events, appears on radio and is the host of a monthly podcast for Vintage publishing. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers in conversation about her breath-taking debut novel, The Love Songs Of W.E.B Du Bois, which chronicles the journey of multiple generations of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. Set to be one of the most talked about books of the year, it was an instant New York Times top 10 bestseller and Oprah Book Club Choice, and has drawn comparisons to the work of Toni Morrison. She is is a fiction writer, award-winning poet and essayist, and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Oklahoma. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Huma Abedin often made the headlines as a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton during her years as First Lady, US Senator, presidential candidate, Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential Nominee. In her memoir Both/And, Huma tells her inspiring story coming of age as an American Muslim, the daughter of Indian and Pakistani scholars who split their time between Saudi Arabia, the United States and the UK. She also writes candidly about family, legacy, identity, faith, motherhood and her marriage to former congressman Anthony Weiner. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian writer, philosopher, historian, professor and former politician. His award-winning books have been translated into twelve languages, and in 2016 he was named a Member of the Order of Canada. Arriving at one of the darkest moments in recent times, ON CONSOLATION is an uplifting and deeply moving portrait of men and women across history who have found the courage to face their fates and continue, unafraid. Asking how we console each other - and ourselves - in an age of unbelief, it draws on sources from the books of Job to the lives of Albert Camus and Primo Levi to show how, in extremity, we can recover hope and resilience. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Join 5x15 to hear bestselling author James Rebanks as he reflects on his prize-winning new book, English Pastoral; the countryside we’ve inherited, and the legacy we want to leave. James Rebanks is a shepherd based in the Lake District, where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. His No.1 bestselling debut, The Shepherd's Life, won the Lake District Book of the Year, was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Ondaatje prizes, and has been translated into sixteen languages. His second book, English Pastoral, was also a Top Ten bestseller and was named the Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year. Heralded as a ‘masterpiece’ by the New Statesman, it was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio prize. With thanks for your generous support for 5x15 online. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Best-selling and ground-breaking authors Emma Dabiri – What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition – and Shon Faye - The Transgender Issue - discuss their work, our current divisions and how we can come together to tell a new story and unite seemingly disparate areas. In What White People Can Do Next, Emma Dabiri’s best-selling manifesto tackling our current discourse on race, she argues that we require “an understanding, not so much of an intersectionality of identities, but an intersectionality of issues. Linking our struggles together is the work of coalition-building, a vision wherein many people can see their interests identified and come together for a common good. We can start to tell new stories, rather than fall back along fault lines that were designed to divide us, to better exploit us.” Shon Faye’s debut book, The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice, is an urgent manifesto for change, calling for justice and solidarity between all marginalized people and minorities. Through coalition building, can we move from theory into practice and find a path to create a more just, free and joyful world for us all? Shon Faye was born in Bristol, and is now based in London. After training as a lawyer, she left the law to pursue writing and campaigning, working in the charity sector with Amnesty International and Stonewall. She was an editor-at-large at Dazed, and her writing has been published by the Guardian, the Independent and Vice, among others. Faye recently launched an acclaimed podcast series, Call Me Mother, interviewing trailblazing LGBTQ elders. Her debut book, The Transgender Issue, is an instant Sunday Times best-seller. Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian academic, activist, broadcaster and teaching fellow in the Africa department at SOAS and a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths. Her 2019 debut Don’t Touch My Hair, (Penguin) was an Irish Times Bestseller and published to critical and commercial acclaim. The book also inspired a national conversation about race and hair and has led to changing regulations in schools and in the British army. A regular broadcaster on the BBC, Emma presented 'Back in Time Brixton' (BBC2), 'Britain's Lost Masterpieces' (BBC4), as well as the sociological experiment 'Is Love Racist?' (Ch4). Most recently, she hosted Radio 4's critically-acclaimed documentary 'Journeys into Afro-futurism’. Ellie Mae O'Hagan is the Director of CLASS. Prior to CLASS, she worked as a strategic communications consultant. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Rationality matters. Steven Pinker discusses a user’s guide to rationality during an epidemic of unreason. Join 5x15 for an enlightening discussion between renowned experimental cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and behavioural economist, broadcaster and writer Tim Harford. In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In his new book, Rationality, Steven Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. Rationality leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, this is a conversation that will enlighten, inspire and empower. Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'. Tim Harford is a behavioural economist, BBC radio and TV presenter and award-winning Financial Times columnist. He offers a distinctive blend of storytelling, humour and intelligence. The presenter of the BBC’s More or Less and Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy, FT columnist, Oxford Fellow and million-selling business author is a compelling storyteller on economics, management, psychology and the unexpected bits in between. Books include The Undercover Economist and How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online.

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, author and jazz pianist. However he is best known - and beloved - as the restaurant critic of the Observer. His new book, Chewing the Fat, is a hilariously rollicking collection of his funniest columns, in which he also attempts to answer such pressing questions as ‘Does bacon improve everything?’ and ‘Is gin really the devil’s work?’. Hailed by Nigella Lawson as ‘Rayner at his rambunctious best: upfront, full fat, and always deliciously written’, these are dispatches from decades spent at the very frontline of eating. Joining Jay in this celebration of gargantuan appetites, glorious wit and deliciousness in book form is Dr Annie Gray, author of the official companion book to The Kitchen Cabinet and one of Britain’s leading food historians. Dr Annie Gray is one of Britain’s leading food historians. She works as a broadcaster, author and consultant. You may have heard her on BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, or seen her cooking up Victorian pies or Tudor stuffed boars’ heads on the BBC. Her books include The Greedy Queen: eating with Victoria, Victory in the Kitchen: the life of Churchill’s Cook, and the forthcoming At Christmas We Feast: Festive Food through the Ages. 5x15 brings together outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Raynor Winn's first book, The Salt Path, charted her extraordinary and uplifting journey around the South West Coastal Path, as she battled homelessness, financial uncertainty and her husband Moth’s terminal illness. The book spent 80 weeks in the Sunday Times best seller charts and has inspired millions with its tale of the healing power of nature, resilience and human endurance. She comes to 5x15 to talk about her new book, The Wild Silence, one couple’s inextricable connection to the land, and the new challenge of rewilding a Cornish farm. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories