Parlando
JAMES RUNCIE, WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE 2025
Def: ‘Delivered or performed in a style suggestive of speech – used as a direction in music’
In 2022, we introduced Parlando, a new literary component to the Incontri in Terra di Siena season to complement the long-established musical programme. Each year, a writer will be invited to be ‘in residence’ during the festival period, attend the concerts, enjoy exchanges with the invited artists, interact with our audience members, participate in an Oltre la Musica event, and generally absorb the festival atmosphere. This residency will enrich our ‘Oltre la Musica’ offerings in the context of a historically literary landscape, vivdly brought to life through the writings of Iris Origo.
Authors will then be invited to write a piece for Parlando which could be an article, a journal, an essay, poetry, commentaries, or any other offerings of their choice; the only requirement is that it should have a connection to music. The piece will be published on the Parlando page of our website, and it will also be available in print during the following year’s festival period as part of a new compendium or digest.
We were therefore very honoured to have hosted the internationally-acclaimed author Louis de Bernières as our very first Parlando writer-in-residence during the 2022 festival.
JAMES RUNCIE, WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE 2025
James Runcie is the author of twelve novels, four plays and a memoir. He is also an award-winning documentary film-maker, playwright and literary curator. He has been Artistic Director of the Bath Literature Festival, Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre, London, and Commissioning Editor for Arts on BBC Radio 4. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of both the Crime Writer’s Association and The Detection Club.
Born in Cambridge, James is the son of Robert and Lindy Runcie. Robert Runcie was a clergyman who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1980-1991. His early experience as a rural vicar inspired James to write The Grantchester Mysteries, a series of six detective novels featuring the clerical detective Sidney Chambers. Grantchester has since become an international television series starring James Norton, Robson Green and Tom Brittney. Lindy Runcie was an accomplished pianist and her love of music, particularly Bach, inspired James to write his novel The Great Passion about the composition of The St. Matthew Passion.
James was married to the drama director Marilyn Imrie for thirty-five years, and they have two children, Charlotte, who is also a writer, and Rosie, who works for the National Theatre of Scotland. Marilyn died in August 2020, and James’s account of their marriage, Tell Me Good Things was published in 2021. He now lives with his partner, Lucinda Bredin, in London and Scotland.