There has, in recent years, been an explosion of interest in short-form writing in American letters. The acclaimed Egyptian-American writer Yahia Lababidi has played a major part in this, as one of the foremost contemporary writers of aphorisms, and this event will mark the UK launch of his latest collection, Where Epics Fail: Meditations to Live By. A reading by Yahia will be followed by a conversation between him and the literary scholar Ben Grant, author of The Aphorism and Other Short Forms (2016). They will address such questions as the nature of the aphorism; how Lababidi’s work has been influenced by the Egyptian and American contexts; and the role of wisdom in today’s troubled world. Please come along and join the conversation.