Fill 2019: Working Class, Writing Class

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

Not so long ago, society experienced a collective hallucination and believed we were “all becoming middle class”. But years of austerity and economic uncertainties have left us with the stark reality of social class divide. Meanwhile, the working class struggles to forge a new sense of identity amid the never-ending transformations of work conditions. In this panel discussion, two top-class writers talk social class from a British and an Italian perspective, how social class intertwines with the current political and cultural wars (just to name one, Brexit), and how novels can address this.

Alberto Prunetti is an Italian writer and translator. He is the author of Amianto. Una storia operaia and most recently of  the novel 108 metri. The new working class hero, set among the underclass living in an English town. He contributes to magazines and online newspapers including Carmilla, Jacobin Italia, La Repubblica, and Il Manifesto. He is the editorial director of Working Class, a book series for Edizioni Alegre.

Anthony Cartwright is a London-based novelist. He worked as an English teacher in schools for over ten years. His novels include How I Killed Margaret Thatcher, Iron Towns, and a novel co-written with Italian writer Gian Luca Favetto in 2015 (Il giorno perduto – Racconto di un viaggio all’Heysel). His latest book is a “Brexit novel”, The Cut. Jonathan Coe said he is “a writer with an unblinking sense of Britain as it is today”.

Chair: Paolo Nelli is a London-based writer and teaches Italian language and culture at King’s College.

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