About this Event
What do we leave behind when we move to a new place – and what do we carry with us, physically and emotionally, wherever we land?
Here are the voices of people who have come to Britain to make a new life: a Czech-Roma lawyer in Reading, an Iranian taxi driver in Shropshire, a Sierra Leonean actor in Northampton, a Romanian police officer in Edinburgh.
Colin Grant has travelled the country and listened to their stories – foundational tales of arriving in a new land, along with rarely spoken stories of love and loss. Together, these accounts ask questions about assimilation, identity, belonging and the emotional cost of migration in twenty-first-century Britain.
Candid, profoundly human, sometimes funny and always moving, What We Leave We Carry is a chance to listen to Britain – in all its richness and complexity.
Colin Grant is an author, historian and critic. His most recent book, I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be was a New Statesman Book of the Year.
Colin will be joined in conversation by actress, director and writer Anni Domingo and writer Isabelle Dupuy.
Isabelle Dupuy is a Haitian-British writer based in London. Her first novel, Living the Dream, was the Tesco headline book for Black History Month 2024 and was again selected to be sold across the UK for October 2025. Living the Dream was the only UK-published novel to make it to the Cannes Film Festival ‘Shoot the Book’ 2025. It was a Guardian summer pick and shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards. Isabelle is a regular contributor to WritersMosaic and has also been published in The White Review, The New York Times, Unbound, Litro and others.
Anni Domingo is an actor, director, educator, journalist and author who has worked extensively in the UK and abroad as an actress, singer and dancer in theatre, radio, TV, and films. She teaches English, Drama and Creative Writing in schools and universities in the UK and works regularly as a Director in the UK.
Event venue & nearby stays
Brixton Library, Brixton Oval, London, United Kingdom
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