Glyph in conversation with Ali Smith

The second novel of the interconnected pair that began with Gliff. Glyph will tell a story which is hidden in Gliff so the two books will belong together but can also be read independently.

Named the #1 best British novelist working today by the Times Literary Supplement.

We're so excited to be welcoming Ali Smith to Bristol to talk about Glyph and it's interconnected pair, Gliff.

It sounds like Gliff?Well, it's something else altogether.

Ghosts don't exist.

They don't. End of.

Story, however.

It is haunting.

Everything tells it.

It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real? Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister.

In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness.

This anti-war novel, Ali Smith’s most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world.

A standalone novel, it’s family to Gliff (2024).

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women’s Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.