Han Smith, author of the ‘kaleidoscopic and beguiling’ (Andrew McMillan) Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking, will be in conversation with Seth Insua at St Hugh’s College on Tuesday 6th May from 17:30 to 18:30.

The fellow St Hugh’s alumni will convene to discuss their recent publications and explore what it means to be ‘Writing Fiction Now’.

For more details and how to get your tickets, click here.

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know.

She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows—almost—about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape.

Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is a story of seeing and part-seeing, of silence and speaking out, of conformation and confrontation, by an exhilarating new voice in fiction.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is out now. Grab your copy here or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.

Follow Han on Twitter @Han_Smiff.