PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT HAS NOW PASSED, BUT YOU CAN STILL ORDER THE BOOK USING THIS BUTTON. Author and committed Singleton Emma John in discussion with Guardian journalist and BBC R4 Front Row presenter Alex Clark about her new memoir Self-Contained: Scenes From A Single Life. 
 
There is a piece of cod-wisdom regularly dispensed to single women: romance will arrive when you least expect it. I had assumed it would also make its own travel arrangements too. Emma John is in her 40s; she is neither married, nor partnered, with child or planning to be.

In her hilarious and unflinching memoir, Self-Contained, she asks why the world only views a woman as complete when she is no longer a single figure and addresses what it means to be alone when everyone else isn't. In her book, she captures what it is to be single in your forties, from sharing a twin room with someone you've never met on a group holiday (because the couples have all the doubles with ensuite) to coming to the realisation that maybe your singleness isn't a temporary arrangement, that maybe you aren't pre-married at all, and in fact you are self-contained. The book is an exploration of being lifelong single and what happens if you don't meet the right person, don't settle down with the wrong person and realise the biggest commitment is to yourself.
 
 
Join us on Zoom to celebrate the launch : Thursday May 6th at 6.30pm. Entry FREE with purchase online of the book (or for ticket only cost is £3 redeemable on the night against purchase of the book. Please use the ticket only button to purchase.)
 
Emma John is an author and journalist whose last book, Wayfaring Stranger: A Musical Journey in the American South, was recently named Travel Book of the Year, as well as one of Newsweek's Travel Books of the Decade. Her debut, Following On: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket, was named Wisden Book of the Year; Emma was also the first woman to win a Sports Journalism Award in the UK.