In the 18th century, Stoke Newington was a hotbed of religious and political dissent. Churches, libraries and intellectual societies were established by local writers, educators and progressive-minded members of the clergy. One such resident was Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, who founded a school near Newington Green. On Sunday (9 June), Caitlin Moran and Suzanne Moore will talk about feminism and politics in her honour, as part of the inaugural Mary Wollstonecraft lectures – one of the many events designed to showcase the area’s history of free thinking.
Stoke Newington, popularly known as “the village that changed the world”, has been home to Daniel Defoe, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Joseph Conrad, Nico and Edgar Allen Poe. The Newington Green Unitarian Church announced in 2008 that it would refuse to carry out any weddings until same-sex couples gained equal marriage rights. The Stoke Newington Literary Festival, now in its fourth year, celebrates the intellectual life of the community with a series of workshops, talks and outdoor events.
On Friday (7 June), Turkey’s bestselling female novelist and cultural thinker Elif Shafak will speak at the Town Hall, where there will also be rare screenings of short films from the BFI’s film archive over the weekend. On Saturday (8 June), Hackney Tours will lead a “radical Stokey walking tour” from Abney Park Cemetery. The next evening, the Hackney-based writer Iain Sinclair follows up a screening of Grant Gee’s Patience (After Sebald) with a discussion with the film’s co-producer Gareth Evans in the Council Chambers.
Elsewhere, Steve Jones will offer a reading of the Bible as science; David Goodhart will examine multiculturalism and the rise of the far right in Britain with the NS assistant editor, Daniel Trilling; and the Tescopoly author, Andrew Simms, will be joined by Harry Wallop, author of Consumed: How Shopping Fed the Class System, to discuss efforts by local people to halt the march of property developers in the area.
The Stoke Newington Literary Festival runs until 9 June. Many events are free and tickets can be purchased on the festival’s website. We’ll be around all weekend, live tweeting many of the events @NS_Culture
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