Every salon is led by a facilitator, whose role is to weave the ideas of participants with questions the writing raises about what it is to be human.
Facilitators provide introductory notes and background materials to support the studies they lead. Using careful questioning and thorough knowledge of the text, they help participants work together to develop a richer understanding of complex and rewarding writing. The aim is always to create an inclusive atmosphere that emphasises the insights and questions every participant brings to the discussion. In this way, the works of great writers and thinkers – from Homer to Shakespeare, Eliot to Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, Morrison and many others – are illuminated by a wide variety of perspectives and experience.
John Allemand, Facilitator
John Allemand (BA, MA English Literature) is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, supervisor, and consultant in private practice in Seattle. A Clinical Instructor in the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, his theoretical and clinical interests include British Object Relations theory and archetypal psychology, but his real passion is the psychoanalytic study of art, literature and film. His PhD dissertation was a psychoanalytic study of the films of Pedro Almodovar; he has curated and moderates a film series designed for psychoanalytic psychotherapists called Psychocinematics. John taught literature for ten years at the university before being lured away by Freud and Jung, but he continues to draw heavily upon literature as a means of tending the unconscious in his clinical work with individuals and groups. His Salon favourites include Proust, Faulkner and Woolf, and John can often be found haunting London virtually at the Courtauld Institute and the National Gallery, where he studies art history.
Toby Brothers, Founder and Director of the Paris and London Literary Salons
Toby Brothers (MA Education, Literature, Counselling, Psychology) leads the Literary Salon, which she conceived and developed in London and Paris (see here for how it all began in Paris). Her experience includes teaching literary seminars on themes ranging from creative writing to women’s literature and film, from Black American Literature to world religions and wisdom traditions, not to forget Shakespeare, Proust and Joyce. Her students include adults, secondary and primary school pupils. Toby has over 25 years of innovative teaching and seminar experience in France (where she began the Paris Literary Salon in 2004), the USA, Japan and beyond, as well as in the UK, where she founded the London Literary Salon in 2008.
Alison Cable, Facilitator
Alison Cable (BA, MA English Literature; MSc candidate in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes) serves on the Board of Directors for Lapidus International, the professional organization for those who believe in the power of words to enhance and transform. She was a university lecturer in the US before moving to London, where she has volunteered as a primary school librarian, written a novel for young adults, and regularly attends and facilitates for the London Literary Salon. She volunteers as a group leader for The Reader Organisation and co-edits Lapidus Magazine, a biannual online magazine for and by the writing for wellbeing community.
Sean Forester, Facilitator
Sean Forester (BA Liberal Arts, MA Literature) is an artist, lecturer and cultural travel guide. He has over 15 years experience teaching literature and art seminars on a wide variety of topics: Greek Tragedy to Leonardo da Vinci, Russian novels to Japanese gardens. Sean’s unique travel tours bring literature to life: Dante’s Florence, Belle Epoque Paris, Renaissance Venice, Zen and Art in Japan. He is a graduate of the Great Books Program at St. John’s College (USA) and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied as a Rotary Scholar.
Sean is also a classically trained oil painter who has exhibited in Europe and the United States.
Keith Fosbrook, Facilitator
As an undergraduate at Oxford University, Keith originally studied Classics before switching to Final Honours in PPP (Psychology, Physiology and Philosophy). Since then, he has spent many years in a variety of secondary schools, teaching Classical subjects, English and philosophy. He returned to Oxford for a further three years, to research the role of emotions in education.
Keith worked for a number of examination boards in the area of Classical Studies, and for some years was a Chief Examiner for Latin Literature. Amongst other skills, this experience allows him to cultivate the art of asking questions that can help students to express what they understand about literature, while ensuring space for the variety of responses provoked.
Nikki Fraunhofer, Facilitator
Nikki plunged into the ‘wine-dark sea’ with The Odyssey salon in 2015. A mysterious siren-song drew her forever closer to the shore until she found herself shipwrecked on an island piled high with dog-eared copies of modernist gems owned by the many tribes of the London Literary Salon. Nikki feasted with Proustians, jousted with Joyceans and ascended a Magic Mountain accompanied by much salonista horn blowing, after which she found herself mysteriously turned into a facilitator by the magic of great literature.
In a previous life, Nikki might have been a consultant psychiatrist, a group analyst, a part-time lecturer on various graduate clinical training courses, and a part-time Church of England priest, but after making friends with some local lotus-eaters, that all seems a terribly long time ago and far, far away.
Nikki’s literary heroes are Marilynne Robinson, Shirley Jackson, and the unknown writers of Job, Esther and Jonah, who packed their books with literary genius, wisdom and not a few jokes.
Caroline Hammond, Facilitator
Poet Caroline Hammond was born and grew up in Toronto. After reading I Capture the Castle at the age of twelve, she vowed to live one day in the United Kingdom. Ten years after that, she left Canada for London, where she has lived ever since, working in professional fields including Human Resources and Learning and Development.
Caroline began writing poetry more than a decade ago. Her poems have appeared in Under the Radar, Finished Creatures and The Adriatic magazines, as well as in the Ink Sweat and Tears Twelve Days of Christmas. She has contributed to The Emma Press Anthology of Contemporary Gothic Verse and the Black Bough Poetry Christmas and Winter Edition.
Caroline helps to facilitate the Lit Salon’s Odyssey and Oresteia studies in Agistri, Greece, where she focuses on poetic metre and modern poetry written in response to classical works. Caroline believes that everyone has more space in their lives for contemporary poetry than they realise.
Dr Karina Jakubowicz is a graduate of University College London, Clare College Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin. She is particularly interested in modernist representations of space and place. She is the author of Garsington Manor and the Bloomsbury Group (Cecil Woolf Press, 2016) and is the winner of the 2017 Katherine Mansfield essay prize for an essay on Woolf, Mansfield and ‘Kew Gardens’, published in Katherine Mansfield Studies (2018). She is currently writing a book entitled Gardens in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction: Modernism, Nature and Space. Karina teaches at James Madison University Virginia and Florida State University. An article on Miss La Trobe in Between the Acts can be read online in Virginia Woolf Miscellany (2017-18), pp. 14-16. Karina creates and produces the Virginia Woolf Podcast for Literature Cambridge.
Ralph Kleinman, Facilitator
Ralph’s love of fiction started in his youth in a small bedroom in a small apartment in Flushing, Queens, New York, where he spent hours alone reading books that were much too difficult and adult for his own good. Unable to break the habit, he continues reading and writing to this day.
Needing to make a living, Ralph worked as an international lawyer for more than 30 years. His career took him with his family to Paris, where he met Toby Brothers and, with his wife Lisa, became one of the original salonistas. Now retired, he feels ready to follow his true vocation as a London Literary Salon Facilitator.
Fluent in French and pretty good at Hebrew, Ralph has a wide experience with Jewish texts and a good library of Jewish sources. His secular, cultural knowledge is also extensive, and he plays classical piano.
But it always comes back to Proust, a book he first read in the long summer of 1980 between university and law school and has reread three (or was it four?) times since. He looks forward to facilitating discussions that can bring readers as much joy from the work as he has had over many years.
Vivien Kogut, Facilitator
Vivien Kogut (MA Comparative Literature, PhD Literature) has been teaching language and literature to groups of all sizes for the last twenty-five years, first in Brazil and since 2010 in the UK. She is a published poet and translator, and currently teaches at Cambridge University. For many years, Vivien led groups discussing Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and for the last fifteen years she has been researching, writing and discussing renaissance travel writing, especially involving pirates and indigenous people. She is interested in history and archaeology and passionate about working comparatively, as well as finding innovative ways of reading, writing and teaching.
Desma Lawrence, Facilitator
Desma Lawrence lives in Melbourne, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Yalukut-willam people of the Kulin Nation.
Desma’s greatest passion is for poetry. Both as an undergraduate philosophy major and through postgraduate studies, she has focused on the relationship between poetry and philosophy. Her honours dissertation, Important and Futile Things, is on Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, and her PhD thesis, The Orphic Liar (2018) is about the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.
Desma teaches ethics at the University of Notre Dame Australia. She has given lecture series at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy and the Melbourne Existentialist Society on a variety of topics related to the intersection of philosophy and poetry, but has largely eschewed the competitive world of academic productivity for quiet family life and time to meander in her literary, poetic and philosophical interests (which at the moment include the LitSalon’s Ulysses ‘Slow Read’).
Deborah Lawunmi, Facilitator
Deborah is an employment lawyer based in London who is currently completing her PhD at Queen Mary University, focusing on issues relating to the construction of black identity in elite workplaces. Although her studies are primarily about the sociology of work, she draws on a wide range of literary references to inform her academic research and writing. She enjoys reading both fiction and non-fiction and has a growing interest in reading short stories, poetry and flash fiction, in addition to fiction that provides insights into under-discussed cultures, including Junot Diaz’s work which has a distinctively Dominican flavour.
Deborah loves everything about the Salon and has been returning regularly for studies since first discovering its work five years ago. A qualified coach and facilitator, she believes that books have the power to heal and provide much needed therapeutic interventions when you least expect it, which is something that keeps bringing her back to the Salon.
Nicky Mayhew, Associate Director
Nicky’s career began in publishing, culminating in five years as publicity director at André Deutsch, working with authors as varied as John Updike, Art Spiegelman, Penelope Lively and Gore Vidal. She went on to work as a freelance publicist and journalist, before co-founding a company that produced TV, radio and online coverage for news stories ranging from the separation of conjoined twins in Saudi Arabia to solar power in the Kalahari Desert, a world land-speed record in the USA and micro-lending in Zambia. Over the years she has interviewed CEOs, sports personalities, scientists, artists, heads of state and members of ruling families, as well as many ‘ordinary’ people.
Nicky has written and edited text for a wide variety of clients, including BBC Television and Jewish Book Week, as well as creating websites for commercial and not-for-profit organizations. Within the Literary Salon she has returned to her literary roots, working with facilitators to curate and deliver study programmes as well as developing business and communications strategy.
Sarah Snoxall, Facilitator
Having initially studied English at Cambridge, Sarah developed an interest in Psychology that led to a second degree, a masters and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology at University College London and Birkbeck. She then started her own business, working with organisations and their boards to develop leaders, co-create new strategies and facilitate difficult conversations around change. Sarah has recently worked with all the constituent colleges of the University of the Arts London, with Goldsmiths, University of London, and with The Green Party. She has experience as a teacher at Birkbeck, University of London, and as a trainer working globally with many different types of organisation.
Returning to her love of great books, Sarah has spent the last four years studying one brilliant book after another with Toby at the London Lit Salon. In addition to literature, she is passionate about all types of music and is always looking for opportunities to play her cello in string ensembles.
Emilia Steuerman, Facilitator
Emilia Steuerman has a PhD in Philosophy and an Advanced Diploma in Inclusive Education. She is the author of The Bounds of Reason – Habermas, Lyotard and Melanie Klein on Rationality and has made many contributions to a variety of academic journals and books. She has taught philosophy at universities in both Brazil and the UK, and has supported children and adolescents with their studies.
Emilia is a devoted London Literary Salon participant and Proust enthusiast.
Julie Sutherland, Facilitator
Julie Sutherland is deeply interested in the capacity of literature—both read and in performance—to effect change in the human spirit. After completing an MA and PhD in English Studies and Seventeenth-Century Studies at the University of Durham, Julie returned to her home country, Canada, to teach Shakespeare and Renaissance Studies at the University of British Columbia and Kwantlen Polytechnic. She has also developed curriculum for Athabasca University’s online Shakespeare modules and created a Shakespeare-for-children programme for an outdoor education group on a tiny island off the Eastern coast of Canada.
Julie has been recognized for teaching excellence in Shakespearean drama in Canada and the UK. She has a long history of leading sessions on Shakespeare, poetry and other literature in educational and non-educational settings in Canada, the US, the UK and online. Julie has also worked in theatre production and administration and even managed to play Titania, Queen of the Faeries, in a semi-professional production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Susanna Taggart, Facilitator
Susanna studied philosophy as an undergraduate and then went into publishing. When that wasn’t all lunches and launches, she retrained as a psychologist gaining a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Surrey. She spent fifteen years working in the NHS providing group and individual therapy and training NHS colleagues and students on the doctoral training programme. She now works in private practice.
Susanna’s love of Ancient Greek literature has grown under the aegis of the London Literary Salon. Since 2018, she has attended numerous Salon studies, going from sceptic to zealot, and would be delighted to accompany you on your journey in Greek literature. Susanna is particularly interested in what the Ancient Greeks had to say about the human condition and how the works are still relevant today.
Jane Wymark (BA Hons Drama, Birmingham University) has worked extensively as an actor on stage and screen. Her early career included seasons in repertory theatre, playing a variety of roles – from Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew to Irina in Three Sisters, and a version of Lucrezia Borgia in David Hare and Howard Brenton’s resetting of the Borgia dynasty in 1970s Nottingham. She played Morwenna in the original Poldark series on BBC Television, and Ophelia to Derek Jacobi’s Hamlet at the Old Vic and its subsequent world tour.
After a five-year break living abroad (in Dhaka and Copenhagen) Jane returned to acting and, amongst a number of roles, is possibly best known for playing Joyce Barnaby in Midsomer Murders. She has also run drama workshops in schools for the National Theatre’s education department, worked as a continuity announcer for BBC Television and Radio 4, and has been a tutor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Literary Researchers & Advisers
Geoff Brown, Literary Researcher & Adviser
Geoff Brown was born in the south of England, spent part of his early childhood in Malta, and has lived in Hertfordshire since the mid-1970s. His interests range across literature, languages, cinema and music.
A particular admirer of Henry James and Marcel Proust, Geoff also counts Anthony Trollope, Don DeLillo, Henri de Balzac, Marie NDiaye and Joyce Carol Oates among his favourite authors. He combines humour with carefully curated knowledge used to challenge assumptions and illuminate literature. Geoff’s work within the Lit Salon has included trailblazing studies of Faulkner, Joyce and Woolf. His research and resource-distillation has also contributed to studies on Javier Marìas and Proust and he has co-facilitated studies of Toni Morrrison’s Jazz.
Paul Caviston, Literary Researcher & Adviser
Paul is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist specialising in working with children and teenagers. He has always been drawn toward novels, poetry, and art in his therapeutic work for inspiration as well as consolation.
Paul believes literature gives us endlessly rich and varied representations of what it is to be human and humane as well as ethical and sane. He grew up in Dublin and spent many happy hours swimming in the Forty Foot.
