The Book Buzz series is back in action presenting, the Emmy Award winning writer/playwright Michael Frayn and critically acclaimed UK writer Claire Tomalin.

They will be featured at British Council Book Buzz events first in Kandy and then in Colombo.
The Book Buzz series was initiated with the objective of offering its audiences the opportunity to experience some of the best contemporary writing to come out of the UK and Sri Lanka.

Michael Frayn began his career as a journalist - first as a reporter on The Guardian, then as a columnist for The Guardian and The Observer.

He has written sixteen plays, including Noises Off, Copenhagen, Democracy, and most recently Afterlife.
He has also translated for the theatre, mostly Chekhov, and written a number of screenplays, including Clockwise, starring John Cleese.

He has published ten novels, including The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong, and Spies; various collections of articles, including Collected Columns, Stage Directions, and Travels with a Typewriter; and two works of philosophy, Constructions and The Human Touch.
Featured events:

'Travels with a typewriter'

When: Tuesday February 2
Time : 17.00
Where: British Council Kandy
Admission :Free

'Writing for Theatre'

When : Friday February 5
Time : 18.30
Where : British Council Hall Colombo
Admission : Free

Claire Tomalin was born in London. After graduating from Newnham College, Cambridge, she worked in publishing before switching to journalism, becoming literary editor of both the New Statesman magazine and the Sunday Times newspaper.

She is the author of highly acclaimed biographies of Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Mary Wollstonecraft and Katherine Mansfield.

Her account of Charles Dickens' relationship with the actress Nelly Ternan, The Invisible Woman:The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, (1990) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography), the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction and the Hawthornden Prize. It was followed by Mrs. Jordan's Profession, a biography of the actress Dora Jordan, consort to William IV.

Her play The Winter Wife (1991) is based on her own biography of Katherine Mansfield. Her biography of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys,(2002) won the Samuel Pepys Award, and the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year award. Her book Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, (2006) was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Biography of the Year.
Featured Events

'Jane Austen'

When : Tuesday February 2
Time : 15.00
Where: British Council Kandy
Admission :Free

'Jane Austen'

When : Friday
February 5
Time : 16.30
Where : British Council Hall Colombo
Admission : Free

For more information on these writers visit www.contemporarywriters.com