Book Club with Margaret Atwood
Thursday, February 11th, 7pm, £5.72-£16.12, eventbrite.co.uk
The Guardian's excellent Live Book Club has a treat in store for its February edition: a chat with Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale and its Booker-winning sequel, The Testaments. For an author whose sci-fi novels seem so prescient, Atwood insists she's not a prophet: "Science fiction is really about now."
She’ll be revisiting Oryx, her 2003 dystopian novel, and Crake, set in a plague-ravaged world, and which she described as “a fun-packed, joke-filled, rollicking adventure tale about the end of the human race”. Well, when you’re facing a man-made medical apocalypse, you’ve just got to make your own fun.
Ériu's Threshold
Saturday, February 13th, 8pm, free, bodyandsoul.ie
We still don't know if we're going to be able to meet up at gigs and festivals this summer, but tonight we can virtually visit Ballinlough Castle, site of the annual Body & Soul boutique festival, for a celebration of the power of rebirth and rejuvenation.
Body & Soul founder Avril Stanley and creative director Mary Hickson have taken the goddess Ériu as their touchstone for a piece that combines dance, theatre, literature, music, cinema, fashion and design to explore the spaces between one state and another – the threshold of the title.
Eiru’s Threshold was filmed by director Mia Mullarkey around the castle grounds during Level 5 lockdown. Its lead dancer, Robyn Byrne, has the tough task of embodying the spirit of Ériu, while the poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa will have to come up with two poems that encapsulate the cycle of birth and death.
The singer Eoin French will bring a supportive male voice to the proceedings, accompanied by Elaine Howley and Kate Ellis. Tickets for this soul-salving event are free, but you need to sign up in advance to get your place on the threshold.
Secret Song
Saturday, February 13th, and Sunday, February 14th, 8pm, €25 (weekend ticket) €15 (day ticket), leviscornerhouse.com
Every year, hidden deep in the wilds of west Cork, a music festival takes place at Levi's Corner House, in Ballydehob. The line-up is secret, and when you arrive at the pub you never know who's going to be playing – or where in the pub they'll be playing. It could be in the back garden, the parlour or even a tiny cupboard.
Secret Song usually happens in June; it didn’t happen last year for obvious reasons. So the pub has decided to stage this virtual Secret Song, with a line-up of excellent artists over two days.
Mogwai: As The Love Continues
Saturday, February 13th, 8pm, £15, store.mogwai.scot
Scotland's finest purveyors of postrock have a new album, As the Love Continues, and they'd like to share it with you via this live-streamed show at Glasgow's Tramway Theatre.
The instrumental band led by Stuart Braithwaite have been remapping the boundaries of rock for more than 25 years; their new album will see them continuing to go boldly into lush sonic territory, blazing a trail for other post-rockers to follow.
The gig is filmed and recorded by the band’s long-term collaborator Antony Crook, and the album will be a chance for the Mogwai not-so-young-any-more team to hear the new album performed in its entirety.
A Night in with Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Monday, February 15th, 6.30pm, £5 (stream only)/€29 (stream and book), fane.co.uk
She's a former Miss World who became a huge Bollywood star; then, incredibly, went on to conquer Hollywood. All this while staying true to her Indian heritage and standing up to sexism and racism in the industry.
To coincide with the publication of her memoir, Unfinished, Penguin Live and Fane Online have set up this interview with the star of the Netflix hit The White Tiger, who will talk about her traditional childhood in India, her teenage years in the United States, her return to India, and her high-profile marriage to the pop star Nick Jonas. You can choose “stream only” or take the “stream and book” option and have a finished copy of Unfinished delivered to your door.
Bill Gates: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
Wednesday, February 17th, 7pm, £21.44, howtoacademy.com
So how do we avert the climate catastrophe that is barrelling our way with globe-crushing inevitability? Billionaires have been blamed for the huge imbalance between rich and poor that is contributing to climate disaster, so why should we listen to the fourth-richest guy in the world tell us how to fix things?
Unlike peers such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who dream up ways to get off the planet, Gates is focused on practical solutions to the problems facing Earth. In this livestream event he’ll be setting out the themes of his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which Penguin says amounts to a practical plan for reaching zero greenhouse-gas emissions. All tickets include a copy of the book.
