Last night’s Worlds festival started in great style with Jeanette Winterson reading and discussing with Jo Shapcott, chaired impeccably by the serene Dame Gillian Beer.

It was a brilliant event; stimulating and full of one-line gems. And there’s plenty more of that to come – please do join us for JM Coetzee, Anna Funder and Tim Parks tonight, Teju Cole tomorrow, Michael Ondaatje and Kamila Shamsie on Thursday and the Granta launch on Friday, as well as afternoon reads up at UEA.

If you can’t make it in person, please do keep an eye on Twitter (hashtag #worlds12), Facebook and our latest news where you’ll find daily updates on the fascinating conversations coming out of the festival as well as podcasts and short films from the readings and provocations from the writers involved.

I think it’s fair to call Worlds a unique festival, because the international writers who are gathered here are not just here to take part in public events, but they are also gathered to discuss between themselves, and for three mornings up at the UEA this week they are talking around issues of memoir, fact, fiction and ‘truth’.

Those conversations started this morning, prompted by introductions from Dame Gillian Beer and the Nobel Laureate JM Coetzee, who we are proud to bring to Norwich for a third time.

We have recorded those introductory thoughts and they’ll be online soon. You can get a flavour of them now, as well as the following discussions by calling up #worlds12 and reading through the tweets.

For now however, please do imbibe our first offerings of the week:

In celebration of Refugee Week, WCN Programme Manager Shenaz Kedar introduces this Worlds Festival event at the Norfolk & Norwich Millennium Library. It features an introduction by current Norwich writer-in-residence Arturo Dorado, as well as fantastic readings by Teju Cole and Vesna Goldsworthy.

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