Tuesday 14th April 2026, 6:30 pm (doors at 6pm) The Station, Silver Street, Bristol, BS1 2AG This April, we will be joined by one of the most celebrated American authors of modern times, Ben Lerner! We are incredibly honoured to be hosting Ben for one of a very small number of UK events to discuss his scintillating, stressful and poignant new novel, Transcription, already in contention as one of our favourites of the year. Ben will be in conversation with fellow acclaimed surgeon of all things fictional Olivia Sudjic. If you were dazzled by Ben’s previous novels The Topeka School, 10:04 and Leaving The Atocha Station, as well as his variously acclaimed poetry collections and writings on related subjects, you’ll know that this whole thing is a bit of a one-off, so don’t sleep on tickets. Pre-order your copy of Transcription (rrp £14.99) for a special discounted price with your ticket, then collect on the night! ABOUT BEN LERNER Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, and is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and The Topeka School. He has published the poetry collections The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw (a finalist for the National Book Award), Mean Free Path and No Art as well as the essay The Hatred of Poetry. Lerner lives and teaches in Brooklyn. Transcription is his fourth novel. Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan ABOUT TRANSCRIPTION The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has travelled to Providence, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor, and the father of his college friend, Max. But after the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to each other, that store or obliterate the memories that make us who we are. ‘Lerner is a linguistic magician and here is another triumphant and beautiful sleight of hand’ – Daisy Johnson ‘Transcription is another masterful intervention from a writer of unparalleled exactitude and intelligence. Lerner’s linguistic precision, stylistic brilliance and philosophical range are not only thrilling things to encounter on the page, they are gentle surgical tools for a tender existential operation upon the reader. They crack open a profound reckoning with how we are living now, and the effect is genuinely startling. We call this fiction, but it is much, much more’ – Max Porter ABOUT OLIVIA SUDJIC Olivia Sudjic was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Her debut novel, ‘Sympathy’ was a finalist for the Salerno European Book Award and Collyer Bristow Prize in 2017. ‘Exposure’ — a personal exploration of art, feminism and anxiety in the digital age — was named an Irish Times and White Review Book of the Year for 2018. Her second novel, ‘Asylum Road’, was shortlisted for the Encore Award and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize in 2021. For venue access info, head to The Station's website.

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