Coventry: Rachel Cusk & Chris Power

The Observer called Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy ‘a landmark in twenty-first century English literature, the culmination of an artist’s unshakeable efforts to forge her own path’. The essays in her latest book Coventry explore other writers who forged their own path – among them Natalia Ginzburg, Olivia Manning and D.H. Lawrence – and wider themes political, personal and ethical.

The discussion focussed on the themes that she has explored in her impressive body of work to date: the thinking and philosophy that have driven her to these positions, how her thinking is evolving and the new challenges that she is exploring. Cusk was in conversation with Chris Power, author of Mothers (Faber and Faber).

Rachel Cusk is the author of the trilogy Outline, Transit, Kudos; the memoirs A Life’s Work, The Last Supper and Aftermath; and several other novels: Saving Agnes (winner of the Whitbread Award), The Temporary, The Country Life (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), The Lucky Ones, In the Fold, Arlington Park and The Bradshaw Variations. She was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best Young British Novelists. She has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize three times, most recently for Kudos.