Sam McAlister & Lucia Osborne-Crowley: Speaking Truth to Power

Scandal, power and privilege - join us for a riveting discussion with Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell and Sam McAlister, known for securing the BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, and whose book Scoops is now a major Netflix movie. 

Their conversation will provide behind-the scenes insight on the complexities of high-profile legal battles, the underlying currents of power and privilege, what it takes to challenge the powerful, and how journalism shapes public perception and accountability.

In conversation with Festival Patron Lucy Caldwell, this is an event not to be missed!

Sam McAlister is an author, academic, speaker, EMMY nominated executive producer and BAFTA nominated interviews producer who has negotiated with everyone from Buckingham Palace to The White House, Tesla to Facebook. Most famously, she negotiated the BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. Sam’s book Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews was released in 2022. It was optioned for a Channel 4 documentary The Problem Prince. It was also optioned by Netflix and Scoop was released in 2024. Sam is played by Billie Piper and the movie was nominated for an Emmy. Sam is also a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE, teaching negotiation in the Law School.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley is an award-winning writer and journalist. She is the author of I Choose Elena, My Body Keeps Your Secrets and The Lasting Harm, which was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize for Literature.

Lucy Caldwell is a Belfast Book Festival Patron, and the author of four novels, most recently These Days, which won the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, three short story collections, Multitudes, Intimacies, and the Openings, and several stage plays and radio dramas. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. In 2021 she won the prestigious BBC National Short Story Award for her story All the People Were Mean and Bad and in 2022 was awarded the EM Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.