We are taking bookings for RSL members only. FREE public tickets can be booked today (Wednesday 3 June) via cogx.co.

In these strange times, are we living through fiction made fact? How have the Internet and AI transformed the way we read and our demands of writing? And how can the Internet and fiction fight oppression?

Author and professor Kate Pullinger will lead a conversation with Dr Charlotte Webb, founder of Feminist Internet, a non-profit organisation on a mission to make the internet a more equal space. They will be joined by Temi Oh, author of acclaimed novel Do You Dream of Terra-Two (Simon & Schuster), which follows a team of team astronauts on a one-way mission to a remote habitable planet.

They will consider the limits of writing to reflect and inspire reality, as well as examining the transformation the Internet and AI has had upon literature in our increasingly uncanny world.

Kate Pullinger (chair) is an author, and her latest novel, Forest Green, follows a logger who works in the forests of British Columbia, comes out in April 2020. Her most recent digital fiction, Breathe, a free ghost story that knows where you are, was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize in 2019. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media at Bath Spa University where she is also Director of the Centre for Research in the Cultural and Creative Industries. 

Temi Oh is the author of Do you Dream of Terra-Two?, a novel about a British expedition to an Earth-like planet which won the American Library Association’s Alex Award in 2020. She graduated from King’s College London with a degree in neuroscience where she founded and ran a book-club called ‘Neuroscience-fiction’, leading discussions about science-fiction books which focus on the brain. She also hosts the RSL's CogX Book Club, discussing Ted Chiang's short story 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects', on Tuesday 9 June, 8pm.

Dr Charlotte Webb is co-founder of Feminist Internet, a non-profit organisation aiming to make the internet more equal by combining art and design, feminism and technology. She recently created a Masters Degree in Internet Equalities for the Creative Computing Institute, London, and developed a 4-week online course ‘Design a Feminist Chatbot’ for Future Learn.

This event will appear on CogX's Createch stage, which will offer an upbeat vision of how converging creativity and technology can improve how we connect, create, and consume. For full information on the CogX programme, head to cogx.co.