The Ink Cloud Reader: Kit Fan in Conversation

We're delighted to welcome poet and novelist Kit Fan to Leeds for this event at the historic Leeds Library, where he'll be reading from and discussing his new collection of poetry, The Ink Cloud Reader, published in April by Carcanet.

In his disquieting third collection The Ink Cloud Reader, Kit Fan takes enormous risks linguistically, formally and visually to process the news of a sudden illness and the threat of mortality, set against the larger chaos of his beloved city Hong Kong and our broken planet. These shape-shifting poems are persistently sensitive to anxiety, and to beauty, questioning the turbulent climate of our time while celebrating the power of ink – of reading and writing.

The event is free and open to all, but please reserve a place on the Eventbrite page. There’ll be a contributions box at the event, if you’d like to support the work of the library and its expansion.

There will also be refreshments, and a bookstall from Truman Books.

Please note that this event is at the Leeds Library on Commercial Street, opposite Accessorize (not the Leeds Central Library!).

Kit Fan is a poet, novelist and critic born and educated in Hong Kong before moving to the UK at twenty-one. His first poetry collection, Paper Scissors Stone (2011), won the Hong Kong University International Poetry Prize. As Slow as Possible (2018) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and one of the Irish Times Books of the Year. He was shortlisted twice for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize. He won the Northern Writers Awards for Fiction and for Poetry, the Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize, and Poetry Magazine Editors' Prize for Reviewing. His debut novel is Diamond Hill (2021). The Ink Cloud Reader is his third poetry collection. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.

Kit is also the featured author on our Book Club in April, where you'll be able to find out more about his work, and read two poems from his new collection.