In Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 (Carcanet, August 2021), the award-winning poet Fred D'Aguiar, reflects on a year of turbulence, fear, and hope.

2020 was a  year  of  global  and  personal  crisis  for  D’Aguiar:  the  pandemic,  the  Black  Lives  Matter  movement,  California  burned,  and  he was  diagnosed  with  stage  4  cancer.  Combining  personal  reminiscence  and  philosophy,  the book questions  the  purpose  of  pursuing  a  life  of  writing  and  teaching  in  the  face  of  overwhelming  upheavals.  Harrowing  yet  uplifting,  it is a  memoir  of  existence,  protest,  and  survival. 

About the Author: Poet, novelist and playwright Fred d'Aguiar has won the Malcolm X and the T.S. Eliot Prize  for Poetry, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction, and he has been  shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a Professor of English at UCLA.  

Spaces are limited. Please contact Harry Whitehead on hdw5@le.ac.uk to secure a place For more information visit the Centre for New Writing’s website: https://le.ac.uk/new-writing. The event is a partnership between Literary Leicester and Renaissance One.