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Megan Nolan on Acts of Desperation

Art &
Culture

An exploration of female desire, feminist politics and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century

‘How could it be true that a woman like me could need a man’s love to feel like a person, to feel that I was worthy of life? And what would happen when I finally wore him down and took it?’

Megan Nolan’s debut novel Acts of Desperation was hailed as a masterpiece by the literary world when it was published in 2021. Searingly honest and darkly amusing, it tells the story of an obsessive relationship. Written in glimmering prose, it charts a young woman’s elation as she falls in love, and the obsession, anxiety and self-doubt that ensue. Nolan is also an acclaimed journalist and essayist whose writing appears in The New Statesman, The Guardian and The New York Times. In January 2022 she came to Intelligence Squared where she was in conversation with Bella Mackie, whose debut novel How To Kill Your Family was also a bestseller.

 

Praise for Acts of Desperation

‘Please believe the hype … a seriously exciting writer.’ – The Sunday Times

‘Oh my god! Such brilliant writing about female desire, codependent love, the ownership that’s taken of female bodies and how it corrupts our relationship to them. I identified hugely. Incredibly honest and visceral.’ – Marian Keyes

‘Megan Nolan is a huge literary talent, and her first novel is a love story like no other.’ – Karl Ove Knausgaard

‘This is an incredible debut . . . Poignant, poetic, raw and utterly unique – I couldn’t stop reading.’ – Pandora Sykes

Event Name

Megan Nolan on Acts of Desperation

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Speakers for the motion

  • Megan Nolan

    Writer and journalist, whose debut novel is Acts of Desperation

Chair

  • Bella Mackie

    Journalist and author of Jog On and How to Kill Your Family

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Speaker

Megan Nolan

Writer and journalist, whose debut novel is Acts of Desperation

Journalist and novelist, who was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays, fiction and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The White Review, The Sunday Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian and in the literary anthology, Winter Papers. She writes a fortnightly column for the New Statesman. Her debut novel is Acts of Desperation.
Chair

Bella Mackie

Journalist and author of Jog On and How to Kill Your Family

Journalist and author, who was a commissioning editor at the Guardian and a news editor at Vice before going freelance. Her first bestselling book, Jog On, dealt with running and mental health, and her novel How to Kill Your Family was a No 2 Sunday Times bestseller and was described by The Sunday Telegraph as a ‘corker of a debut’. 

Speakers subject to change.