EVENTS

UPCOMING EVENTS

Welcome to our events page.

Unless stated otherwise, all events occur in
Desperate Literature, Calle Campomanes 13, Madrid,
and are not ticketed!

SUNDAY
Feb 16th
20h00

O Something Very Serious Indeed

poetry with
Sarah Fletcher

Sarah Fletcher joins us to read a selection of new poetry and works from her first collection, Plus Ultra (Cheerio Press, 2023).

‘Cool, sexy, dangerous and brilliant […] PLUS ULTRA is essential reading.’Victoria Kennefick

‘Sarah Fletcher’s poems are highly mobile, troubled, troubling, rich and fraught.’ Chris Kraus

Sarah Fletcher is an American-British writer currently researching a PhD at Aberystwyth on pain and language. Her poems have appeared in the White ReviewPoetry LondonPoetry Review and other publications. She has published three pamphlets: Kissing Angles (Dead Ink, 2015), Typhoid August (Poetry Business, 2018) and Caviar (Out-Spoken, 2022). PLUS ULTRA is her first book.

Tuesday
Feb 18th
20h00

FEAR:
An Alternative History of the World

with Robert Peckham

Robert Peckham joins us to read from and discuss FEAR: An Alternative History of the World, the story of how fear has shaped societies around the world for the last 700 years – through plagues, revolutions, technology, economics, terrorism, wars, pandemics, and more.

‘[An] elegant synthesis of centuries of intellectual history … Peckham’s mapping of fear across centuries of thought offers an opportunity to reflect on a persistent political geography of anxiety.’ — The Lancet

Robert Peckham is a cultural historian and founder of Open Cube, an organisation that promotes the integration of the arts, science, and technology for health. He was previously Professor of History and MB Lee Endowed Professor in the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. He has held fellowships at Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, and King’s College London, and been a visiting scholar at NYU. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he has published in Foreign Affairs, New Statesman, Prospect,  the Guardian, the Independent and the TLS. He lives in New York.