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Tom Hanks to appear in UK-exclusive Southbank event
Tom Hanks will be discussing his first collection of fiction in a UK-exclusive event at Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival in a "rare literary experience".
In collaboration with Penguin Live, Hanks will make his Royal Festival Hall debut, and his only UK appearance to discuss his new book, on 1st November 2017. Hanks will introduce Uncommon Type (William Heinemann), a collection of short stories exploring "the human condition and all its foibles", with each story connected by the recurring motif of a typewriter.
The event will be complete with live readings from Hank as well as discussion of his writing process and inspiration.
Stories in the collection include a man immigrating to New York City after fleeing a civil war; a woman adjusting to her post-divorce life; an actor enduring a whirlwind press junket; and an eccentric billionaire and his faithful assistant on the hunt for something larger in America.
Hanks said: “I am delighted to be presenting my first collection of short stories at London Literature Festival and am looking forward to reading a sample to the audience in Royal Festival Hall. It’s a privilege to be a part of a festival that features a line-up of living literary greats, and in London, a city that I find inspiring with its own rich history of storytelling.”
Ted Hodgkinson, senior programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at Southbank Centre, promised the discussion would be "a rare literary experience".
"Beloved for his wit and sensitivity as an actor, Tom Hanks brings these characteristics to his first collection of short stories, Uncommon Type," said Hodgkinson. "We're thrilled he's chosen to present them at Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival, which has long championed the art of the short story, and given a platform to writers as varied in their backgrounds as they are in their literary styles. To hear these stories read live for the very first time by the unmistakable voice of their author, and hear what drew this remarkable storyteller to write fiction, will be a rare literary experience."
The event marks the finale to Southbank Centre’s 2017 London Literature Festival, which runs from 13th October to 1st November and features 20 days of live readings, performance, talks, debates, visual displays, workshops and music across Southbank Centre’s 17-acre site. Hanks joins a roster of authors on the bill including Anne Carson, Tracy Chevalier, Goldie, Karl Ove Knausgård, Annie Leibovitz, David Mitchell and Philip Pullman, among others.
