Ayanna Lloyd Banwo & Okwiri Oduor: The New Magical Realism. Mothers and daughters, curses and ghosts, all-conquering love – discover two debuts that cast a fantastical spell on readers. When We Were Birds, by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, sees a daughter inherit her mother’s ability to speak to the dead. In Okwiri Oduor’s Things They Lost a young Kenyan woman is unable to escape the curse that afflicts the women in her family. Join them for a discussion at the intersection of this world and the next, chaired by journalist and editor Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff. Buy tickets here