Non-fiction writer Dan Richards in conversation with Emma Sutton

Join School of English colleagues for a conversation between writer Dan Richards and critic and academic Emma Sutton about adventurous non-fiction — hybrid questing approaches to memoir, the importance of engaging directly and poetically with source material, and the power of asking simple child-like questions. The event will include an open Q&A.

Dan Richards is a writer and broadcaster who has written for newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, Economist, Monocle, Telegraph, Granta, and Harpers Bazaar. His first book, Holloway (Faber, 2013), co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

In Climbing Days (Faber, 2016), Dan followed in the footsteps and handholds of his trailblazing relatives, Dorothy Pilley and I.A. Richards, pioneers of Alpine peaks and English Criticism alike.

His most recent work, Outpost: A Journey to the Wild Ends of the Earth (Canongate, 2020), examined the appeal and pull of far-flung shelters in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts; landscapes and cabins which have long inspired adventurers, pilgrims, writers, and rtists.

Only After Dark, Dan's BBC Radio 4 series about the nocturnal operations which replenish, repair and protect the world whilst most of us are asleep, was broadcast in December 2022. Overnight — a questing book along similar lines — is set to be published in 2025.