An evening of readings and conversation about the Hamidian Massacres of 1894 to 1896, when widespread violence against Armenians and other Christian communities swept the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Abdülhamid II. Poet and academic Dr Tamara Wilson, together with authors Andrew Finkel and Maureen Freely, will read from their work and explore how literature can open a way into painful histories and their lasting echoes across generations.
After the readings, the three writers will discuss the challenges and possibilities of turning the past into narrative: how fiction and poetry deal with history, memory, displacement and silence, and how literary imagination can bring the past into conversation with the present.
- Tamara Wilson: award-winning poet, academic and chair of Exiled Writers Ink
- Andrew Finkel: author of The Adventure of the Second Wife: The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and the Ottoman Sultan (2024), and a long-time reporter from Turkey
- Maureen Freely: author of My Blue Peninsula (2023)
