American memoirist Laura Bell spent a lifetime working on the plains of Wyoming as everything from a cowgirl to running horse-pack trips.

 When her partner offered to support her while she wrote, Bell decided to follow someone else's lead for the first time in her life and discovered the pleasure and struggle of being 'a kept woman.' Helen Simpson's dark, hilarious explorations of life and love force us to ask why and how we came to be walking down a path that seems to lead only to apocalypse. Together, they will look back at their work in Granta's F Word issue and explore ideas of power, feminism and choice in an evening of reading and conversation. This is an unmissable night with Bell, an author on a rare visit to the UK, and one of Britain's greatest short story writers.

At Chalk Farm Library, Sharpleshall Street, London NW1 8YL