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An Evening With Kate Briggs
Join us at Tills Bookshop for an evening with Windham-Campbell Prize-winning author and translator, Kate Briggs.
If you have attended our reading groups and seminars in the past, you will likely know how much we love the work of Kate Briggs. Her long essay, This Little Art (Fitzcarraldo, 2017), is a lively, generous, and fiercely rigorous exploration of literary translation. For the team at In Other Words, it is a key text that we hold dear and keep returning to. So we are thrilled to welcome Kate Briggs to Edinburgh to discuss her most recent translation, the French classic, Lili Is Crying (Fitzcarraldo, 2025), by Hélène Bessette.
Lili is Crying, Hélène Bessette’s debut novel, is the story of a daughter and a mother, and their enormous, all-encompassing emotional lives in a small French countryside village. With a near-mythic quality, Bessette’s stripped-back prose evokes at once the pain of thwarted love – of desire run cold – and the promise of renewal.
Lauded by critics on its initial publication in 1953 for its boundary-pushing style, Lili is Crying demonstrates an unusual economy of expression, strange humour and presents us with prose of a striking vivacity. Kate Briggs’ new translation brings Bessette’s singular take on the ‘poetic novel’ into our contemporary literary landscape.
‘Living literature, for me, in France today – it’s Hélène Bessette.’ – Marguerite Duras.
Doors open at 6.45 pm and the event will start at 7.00 pm.
We could not be more excited!
Notes on ticketing:
Tickets are £5 and are redeemable against a copy of any book written or translated by Kate Briggs at Tills Bookshop.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo, we are able to offer 5 free tickets to the event. If you feel like you would struggle to pay the full price of the ticket but would still like to attend, please select the free ticket option. No evidence is needed.
Tickets ensure fair compensation for all contributors, as well as the upkeep of the spaces that host us. You can learn more about our work and support our varied projects, which include our interview series ‘Talking with Translators’, reading groups, participatory workshops around translation, as well as research.
Join us at Tills Bookshop for an evening with Windham-Campbell Prize-winning author and translator, Kate Briggs.
If you have attended our reading groups and seminars in the past, you will likely know how much we love the work of Kate Briggs. Her long essay, This Little Art (Fitzcarraldo, 2017), is a lively, generous, and fiercely rigorous exploration of literary translation. For the team at In Other Words, it is a key text that we hold dear and keep returning to. So we are thrilled to welcome Kate Briggs to Edinburgh to discuss her most recent translation, the French classic, Lili Is Crying (Fitzcarraldo, 2025), by Hélène Bessette.
Lili is Crying, Hélène Bessette’s debut novel, is the story of a daughter and a mother, and their enormous, all-encompassing emotional lives in a small French countryside village. With a near-mythic quality, Bessette’s stripped-back prose evokes at once the pain of thwarted love – of desire run cold – and the promise of renewal.
Lauded by critics on its initial publication in 1953 for its boundary-pushing style, Lili is Crying demonstrates an unusual economy of expression, strange humour and presents us with prose of a striking vivacity. Kate Briggs’ new translation brings Bessette’s singular take on the ‘poetic novel’ into our contemporary literary landscape.
‘Living literature, for me, in France today – it’s Hélène Bessette.’ – Marguerite Duras.
Doors open at 6.45 pm and the event will start at 7.00 pm.
We could not be more excited!
Notes on ticketing:
Tickets are £5 and are redeemable against a copy of any book written or translated by Kate Briggs at Tills Bookshop.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo, we are able to offer 5 free tickets to the event. If you feel like you would struggle to pay the full price of the ticket but would still like to attend, please select the free ticket option. No evidence is needed.
Tickets ensure fair compensation for all contributors, as well as the upkeep of the spaces that host us. You can learn more about our work and support our varied projects, which include our interview series ‘Talking with Translators’, reading groups, participatory workshops around translation, as well as research.