PERCIVAL is the first academic conference dedicated to the work of American author Percival Everett ever held in the UK.  

Everett Studies is at a key stage of its development, and 2024 represents a pivotal moment in Everett’s career generally – as shown by the publication of his 24th novel James by major publishing houses, and the Academy Award and BAFTA wins of American Fiction, which is an adaptation of his 2001 novel Erasure. The first two Everett monographs were also published in 2019 and 2020 (written by the American scholars Derek C. Maus and Anthony Stewart), and in 2021 Everett was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022 and 2024. In British academia, Everett has been historically underappreciated and underdiscussed despite his increasing reputation elsewhere or in other sectors. 

This conference will take place from Friday the 6th to Saturday the 7th of December 2024 at King’s College London, with support from the British Association for American Studies. It seeks to accelerate the growing research interest in Everett’s work in the UK through collaboration with international scholars (particularly from the US and France) who have worked on or taught Everett for decades. The event will include an “Everett in Context” roundtable featuring a French translator of Everett’s work (Anne-Laure Tissut), a publisher of his work from Influx Press (Kit Caless), and a documentary filmmaker who has directed a film about him (Alexandre Westphal). The event will also include a Saturday cinema screening of this documentary – L’écrivain et son double – at the Genesis Cinema in East London.