Event overview
Novelists Roisin Dunnett and Sam Fisher in conversation
In a silverware shop, a young wife works alongside her husband. Amid growing political turmoil, Bea finds solace in the local marsh, where she is visited recurrently by a mysterious presence, logging each appearance carefully in a scarlet journal. In a time like now, Kay navigates friendship, queerness and the temporary job market, whilst contemplating the significance of her life in a world with such an uncertain future. At her grandmother’s house she finds an intriguing record of an angel’s visits. A hundred years into the future, outsiders have banded together to live off-grid away from a corrupt government and a city wracked by oppression and climate change. When Ess is chosen for a virgin mission, a journey into the past to save the present, she is guided only by a well-thumbed red notebook. Set against the shifting landscape of East London marshes and expanding over three centuries, Roisin Dunnett's A Line You Have Traced is the breathtaking, urgent story of three women separated by history but threaded together by unknown forces.
Roisin Dunnett is a writer from London. Her fiction pamphlet Animal, Vegetable was published in 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. Her short fiction has been published in Prototype, Hotel, Ambit, Vittles and elsewhere. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths where she was taught by Chris Power and Francis Spufford, and where she was longlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize in 2022.
The snow has melted, but the thaw reveals a world transformed. London is in ruins, its population a fraction of its pre-freeze level. The weather has become wildly unpredictable - huge pressure swings leading to powerful localised storms. And this has led to an epidemic of migraine. When a storm hits, the pain comes, along with a wide range of visual and haptic hallucinations named migraine 'aura'. The novel starts with Ellis, one of a very small proportion of the population who don't suffer from weather-induced migraines, being struck by a migraine attack for the first time. After being blinded by hallucinations, he wakes in a ruined bookshop with its former owner, Sam, who pulled him to safety from the storm. No longer excluded from the migraine epidemic, Ellis decides to find his ex-girlfriend, Luna, and win her back. With Sam tagging along, he sets out from the bookshop and heads south. Compelling and insightful, Sam Fisher's Migraine is concerned with questions such as: what does a society look like, if it's organised around chronic pain? What kind of culture would this set of conditions produce?
Samuel Fisher is a writer, bookseller and publisher. His debut novel, The Chameleon (Salt, 2018) was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, shortlisted for the Collyer Bristow Prize and won a Betty Trask in 2019. His second novel Wivenhoe was published by Corsair in 2022. The follow up, Migraine, was published in 2025. He co-owns Burley Fisher Books in Hackney and is a director of Peninsula Press.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Nov 2025 | 5:00pm - 6:00pm |
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