Saturday 06 June 2026, 2.00pm
Colchester Samaritans, Walsingham Road Community Hall, 34 Walsingham Road, Colchester, CO2 7BN

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2026
Winner of the Nero Non-Fiction Award 2025
A Book of the Year for The Times, Guardian, Financial Times and Observer.

Tickets: £10 / £8 (students, under 27s and unwaged)
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

This event is part of our Love & Loss day of events at Colchester Samaritans on Saturday 06 June.

Sarah Perry

Photo of Sarah Perry © Sophie Davidson

Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Death of an Ordinary Man

An unflinching and profoundly moving account of caring until death, from Booker-Prize-longlisted Sarah Perry.

Sarah Perry’s father-in-law, David, died at home nine days after a cancer diagnosis and having previously been in the good health. The speed of his illness outstripped that of the NHS and social care, so the majority of nursing fell to Sarah and her husband. They witnessed what happens to the body and spirit, hour by hour, as it approaches death.

Death of an Ordinary Man is an unstinting account of death by cancer, a reportage into the daily experience of caring, an exploration of the structural conditions of dying in the UK, and most importantly a testament to David’s life, that of an ordinary man.

Unflinching and profoundly moving, Sarah Perry confronts the taboo surrounding death and shows us how to confront all of the terror and beauty that comes with the end of life – and how the saddest thing she has ever seen is also the best thing she’s ever done.

Now I understand there are no ordinary lives – that every death is the end of a single event in time’s history: an event so improbable as to be miraculous, and irreplaceable in every particular.

In Death of an Ordinary Man, Sarah Perry brings her Booker-shortlisted novelists eye to her first full length work of non-fiction. A genre defying work of extraordinary empathy and power with all the qualities that make her fiction so compelling.

Read the Guardian review of Death of an Ordinary Man: A brilliant meditation on mortality.

The post Death of An Ordinary Man appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Enlightenment is Sarah’s finest novel to date. It is a story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends.

Sarah Perry is an internationally bestselling author. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Her work includes the novels Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls.

She is a winner of the Waterstone’s Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award and has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award.

We were delighted to have Sarah Perry join us for our launch event at University of Essex to discuss the book. Here is just some of the feedback we received about this thought-provoking event:

“The interview with Sarah Perry was exceptional, great questions, but most of all the author was very eloquent, unassuming and humble in her responses whilst being so thought provoking. It really was a very lovely event. Thank you!”

“Wow what a dazzling event , such a privilege to hear Sarah Perry discuss her work , writing process , inspirations and read from enlightenment. An exceptional talent, could have listened to her for a lot longer.”

If you missed it you can watch the recording of Sarah Perry’s event on our YouTube channel.

Congratulations Sarah – you really are a shining star!

The post Festival Patron, Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment longlisted for the Booker Prize appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

There are still a few tickets left to join us for this very special opening event celebrating both the 25th edition of Essex Book Festival and the 60th anniversary of University of Essex.

If you are not able to make it in-person, you can watch online for free. The event will be live-streamed to YouTube including live subtitles by StageText.

To register to watch the event online go to tickettailor.com. The link to watch the event live will be sent to you once you have registered.

The post Sarah Perry: Enlightenment – Watch online for free appeared first on Essex Book Festival.