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Reflections from our 2024 Reading Round writers

Over the past year, our Reading Round writers have led groups in local communities across the UK, bringing people together to hear stories and poems read aloud and discuss their responses. For some Reading Round members, it’s the first time they have engaged with literature since leaving school and the shared experience is a revelation. People in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Middlesborough, Country Tyrone, Liverpool and many other places have spent the past year exploring literature in the company of one of our professional writers, building new relationships at the same time.

Wren James with a member of the Reading Round group they led in Coventry.

Here, some of our Reading Round Fellows share their highlights from the past year.

Sonia Faleiro, who led a Reading Round group in South London, said: “What I learned… is that sometimes a story doesn’t need to be ‘easy’ to be meaningful. It just needs to make someone feel seen.”

Peter Kalu, who led a Reading Round group in Manchester, said: “The short story, Recitatif, is, as far as I know, the only short story Toni Morrison ever wrote. The group were spellbound by it. I began with a central question the group should seek to answer – one that Morrison herself centres in the story: ‘Is Twyla black or is it Roberta who is black?’ By the end, consensus was that the story suggested the friendship of the two women, despite the divisions of race-inflected fallings-out, was bigger than their conflict and bigger than their class separation; the trauma bond of their shared, care home childhood had created a deep, unshift-able, life-long, affective bond. I had never seen the group so moved as at this point. The conversations about the story continued well after the session ended, and members still sometimes ask me about it.”

David Mark, who led a Reading Round group in Hexham, Northumberland, said: “[My group told] me that they had no intention of shying away from intense feelings and actually enjoyed the feeling of being emotionally wrung-out that came about as a result of reading weightier works than they would choose for pleasure.”

Sara Shaarawi, who led a Reading Round group in Glasgow, said: “Being a Reading Round Fellow has enriched my life, my writing and also my politics. I think a lot about the importance of communal spaces and how we can share a space even when we don’t agree.”

Jasbinder Bilan reading with a member of the Reading Round group she led in Bath.

Our other 2024 Reading Round Fellows were Zebib K. Abraham in Edinburgh, Jasbinder Bilan in Bath, Somerset, Mark Blayney in Cardiff, Ishy Din in Middlesborough, Maggie Harris in Kent, Wren James in Allesley, Coventry, Felicity McCall in Derry City, North West Ireland, Anthony J Quinn in Country Tyrone, Northern Ireland, Leila Rasheed in Birmingham, Pauline Rowe in Liverpool and Anna Wilson in Penzance, West Cornwall.

All photography by Fernando Manoso.

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