BookBar @ Saltine Presents... Lauren Oyler in conversation with Sheena Patel

Join BookBar @ Saltine to hear from one of America's most influential and frank critics, Lauren Oyler, to discuss her first essay collection, No Judgement, with author Sheena Patel.

It is the age of internet gossip; of social networks, repackaged ideas and rating everything out of five stars. Mega-famous celebrities respond with fury to critics who publish less-than-rapturous reviews of their work (and then delete their tweets); CEOs talk about reclaiming 'the power of vulnerability'; and in the world of fiction, writers eschew actually making things up in favour of 'always just talking about themselves'.  In this blistering, irreverent and very funny first book of non-fiction, Lauren Oyler - one of the most trenchant, influential, and revelatory critics of her generation - takes on the bizarre particularities of our present moment in a series of interconnected essays about literature, the attention economy, gossip, the role of criticism and her own relentless, teeth-grinding anxiety. Illuminating and thought-provoking, by turns drily scathing and disarmingly open, No Judgement excavates the layers of psychology and meaning in how we communicate, tell stories and make critical judgements - to offer dazzling insights into how we live and think today.

Lauren Oyler is a critic and novelist based in Berlin, Germany. Her essays on books and culture appear regularly in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper’s, the London Review of Books, and many other publications. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in 2021. A new collection of essays, No Judgment, will appear in March 2024.

Sheena Patel is a writer and assistant director for film and TV who was born and raised in North West London. She is the author of I'm A Fan and part of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE collective, has been published in 4BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE (Rough Trade Books) and a poetry collection of the same name (FEM Press). I'm A Fan won the Discover Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2023, was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Jhalak Prize. 2022 she was chosen as one of the Observer‘s Top 10 best debut novelists.