December 11, 2018

Writing and Frankness

1 hour 6 minutes

Deborah Levy, Adam Phillips and Amia Srinivasan join Matthew Sweet at the British Library for a Royal Society of Literature debate.

Why do we read? Why do we write? What do we reveal when we do? A writer, a psychotherapist and a philosopher discuss what we reveal about ourselves through literature and the difference, if any, between non-fiction, novels and the psychotherapist’s couch.

Deborah Levy is a playwright, novelist and poet. In her ‘living autobiography’ The Cost of Living, she considers what it means to live with value, meaning and pleasure. Adam Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and Visiting Professor in the English department at the University of York.

Amia Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and works on topics in epistemology, metaphilosophy, social and political philosophy, and feminism. She is a contributing editor of the London Review of Books.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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