Welcome! We are no longer staging events live and online. The Salon Podcast is still live as a sort of archive, so please enjoy it.

Damian Barr’s Literary Salon started at Shoreditch House in 2008. Since then, we’ve popped up all around the world from Sydney to São Paulo, from Motherwell to Moscow, with iconic partners including British Airways, the British Council and the Women’s Prize. We’ve appeared on stages large and small and, once, memorably, in a field.

In August 2023, after fifteen amazing years and over a hundred fabulous events with hundreds of incredible writers and a pioneering podcast and a spin-off TV show, we feel it’s the right time to say: The End.

Thank you for all your support and for loving books and stories and the people who make them. You’ve always been there listening and thinking. You are the very best readers. And some of you aren’t bad at writing either.

For me, Damian, hosting Salon has been the purest joy. It’s made me laugh and cry and often a messy combination of both. It has enriched my reading immeasurably and given me a writing life I could never have imagined. But my own books stubbornly refuse to write themselves. I’ve got a play on the way and a novel to finish then a memoir to start - I’m delighted to be joining Canongate! At this point in my life, I need to do what every single of one our guest writers has done and make time for my own writing. I hope you get the time you need and deserve for your own creativity, whatever form it takes.

Happy reading!