Join us to celebrate the paperback publication of Chopping Onions on My Heart Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture – and when to let it go. The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha Ellis grew up surrounded by a language that’s now on the verge of extinction. The realisation that her son will not understand her mother tongue opens the floodgates and the questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle? In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food in a journey that transports us from the calm of the British Museum to the banks of the River Tigris. As she considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves. Samantha Ellis is a British playwright, author, and journalist born in London to Iraqi-Jewish refugee parents. A co-founder of the women’s theatre company Agent 160, her plays include the internationally produced romantic comedy How to Date a Feminist , and she contributed to the screenplays for the first two Paddington movies. She is also widely known for her non-fiction books, including the reading memoir How to Be a Heroine , the biography Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life , and her recent Wingate Award-shortlisted memoir, Chopping Onions on My Heart , which explores her heritage and the endangered culture of the Iraqi-Jewish diaspora. Emily Rhodes is a London-based writer, journalist, and former bookseller known for using literature to build community. She is the founder of Bookbanks, a charity launched in 2022 that partn

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