Author Zadie Smith and Booker Prize winner David Szalay announced for UEA Live autumn line-up

By: Communications

Zadie Smith is looking to the left with her hair in two braids, wearing red lipstick and a red top, David Szalay is wearing a beige jumper and looking at the camera with his chin in his hand

L-R: Zadie Smith (credit: Ben Bailey Smith) and David Szalay

From major literary prize winners to some of the most influential voices in contemporary fiction, this year’s UEA Live autumn programme will host an exceptional range of authors.

The 2026 season includes a rare appearance from acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty), making her first visit to the University of East Anglia (UEA) in more than two decades, and 2025 Booker Prize winner David Szalay (All That Man Is, London and the South-East).

This year’s Noirwich lecture will be delivered by award-winning horror novelist and UEA Creative Writing MA graduate Catriona Ward.

All events will include an audience Q&A, followed by a book signing – with books available to purchase on the night.

Hannah Tough, Public Events and Engagement Manager at UEA, said: “Every season, we think this is our best UEA Live programme yet, but this one really feels like the cream of the crop with a little flavour of something for everyone.

“It is a real coup for UEA to be welcoming Vienna-based writer David Szalay in what has been a hectic year of book tours for this sought-after author. And, as for Zadie Smith, she has been top of the wish list for a while (21 years since her last visit), what a thrill.”

Wednesday 9 September – Noirwich 2026: Catriona Ward

6pm at UEA Drama Studio

Image: Catriona Ward (credit: Robert Hollingworth)

This year’s Noirwich lecture, ‘Reading with the Body’ will be delivered by award-winning horror novelist and UEA Creative Writing MA graduate, Catriona Ward.

From Agatha Christie’s body in the library to Poe’s telltale heart and the bodiless entities of The Haunting of Hill House, crime, gothic and uncanny fiction are all haunted by questions of embodiment. In this lecture, Ward will explore the various bodies that litter these pages, as well as how our own physical responses invite us into these books, making the reader an intrinsic part of the function of the text.

Ward – who is the author of Rawblood, Sundial and Nowhere Burning – is the only woman to win the August Derleth Award three times, an annual British literary prize given for the best horror novel.

The Noirwich event will be followed by the MA Creative Writing Crime Fiction anthology launch – which will be introduced by Harriet Tyce, a recent star on BBC One’s Traitors series and UEA MA in Crime Fiction graduate – and a drinks reception.

Wednesday 30 September – Janice Hallett

6.30pm at The Enterprise Centre, UEA

UEA Live's autumn programme begins with award-winning crime novelist Janice Hallett.  

Since the success of her debut, The Appeal, a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and winner of the CWA Debut Dagger Award, Hallett has become one of the UK's most celebrated crime writers – with six Sunday Times bestselling novels to her name.

In conversation with Dr Nathan Ashman, she will discuss her long-awaited sequel, The Silent Appeal.

Two women are smiling at the camera, the one on the left wears glasses and sits indoors, the other is against an abstract art background.

Image L-R: Janice Hallet and Hallie Rubenhold (credit: Sarah Blackie)

Thursday 8 October – Hallie Rubenhold

6.30pm at UEA Drama Studio

Prize-winning social historian Hallie Rubenhold returns to UEA’s campus (having studied here for her year abroad) to discuss her gripping examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century.

In her latest book – Story of a Murder: The Wives, The Mistress, and Dr Crippen – Hallie once again gives a voice to those who have never properly been heard – the women.

Wednesday 14 October – David Szalay

6.30pm at Lecture Theatre 1, UEA

Join 2025 Booker Prize winner David Szalay as he explores the critical success of Flesh, his sixth work of fiction and the novel that secured him the prestigious literary award.

Szalay has been the recipient of the Gordon Burn Prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction, Edge Hill Prize, and was previously shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2016.

Headshots of a man in a sweater, a woman in a white shirt with dark hair and her arms crossed, and a smiling blonde woman in a denim jacket.

Image L-R: David Szalay; Louise Doughty; Jill Dawson (credit: Joanne Coates)

Saturday 24 October – Louise Doughty and Jill Dawson

6.30pm at The Enterprise Centre, UEA

As the Norwich Book Festival returns to the city for its third year, audiences will have the opportunity to hear from two of the UK's most acclaimed contemporary writers here on campus – about their latest books, writing processes and personal lives.

UEA graduate Louise Doughty (author of the bestselling psychological thriller, Apple Tree Yard, which was adapted into a BBC One television series), joins poet and novelist Jill Dawson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, to discuss their latest works and the craft of writing.

Wednesday 4 November – Zadie Smith

6.30pm at Lecture Theatre 1, UEA

This November, UEA welcomes Zadie Smith, one of the most influential literary voices of her generation, for a special discussion of her new essay collection, Dead and Alive.

Known for her award-winning novels (including White Teeth, On Beauty and Swing Time), Smith will explore the urgent questions and defining concerns that shape her latest work.

An image of a woman with two braids, red lipstick and a red shirt looking to the left, the cover of 'Dead and Alive Essays' by Zadie Smith, a man in a blue shirt is looking at the camera with glasses.

Image L-R: Zadie Smith and book cover for 'Dead and Alive Essays' by Zadie Smith (credit: Ben Bailey Smith); John Lanchester

Tuesday 1 December – John Lanchester

6.30pm at UEA Drama Studio

UEA Live will close its 2026 season with acclaimed journalist and novelist John Lanchester, who is the author of Capital and The Wall.

In conversation about his latest novel, Look What You Made Me Do, Lanchester will explore themes of resentment and entitlement through a darkly comic story of two women from different generations, heading toward a battle only one of them can win.

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