Claire Shanahan on The Sebald Lecture/Claire Tomalin

I've been lucky enough to attend two great events the last two Monday nights; braving the cold weather and fighting my natural tendency to hibernate at the start of the working week has proved well worth it! Firstly for the annual W G Sebald lecture, given this year by poet Sean O'Brien, and just a few days ago for Claire Tomalin addressing a crowd in the Guildhall as part of the numerous celebrations for Charles Dickens' bicentenary.

The Sebald lecture is given as part of the Society of Authors' Translation Awards, made up of different categories each with their own linguistic focus. The ceremony was competently compered by Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement. The categories include: the Saif Ghobash Prize for Arabic, which is supported by Arabic book publisher Banipal; the Schlegel Tieck Prize for German, whose judges included author Philip Hensher and Emily Jeremiah, herself a prize-winning translator; the Scott Moncrieff Prize for French; the Premio Valle Inclan Prize for Spanish, supported by Instituto Cervantes; and the Vondel Prize for Dutch or Flemish which awards its winner £5,000.

Irishman Frank Wynne, aka @Terribleman on Twitter, was on the stage twice - firstly to collect his runners-up prize for his translation of Boualem Sansal's An Unfinished Business (Bloomsbury), joint with Sarah Ardizzone for her translation of Daniel Pennac's School Blues (Maclehose Press), and then again for his translation of Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras (Atlantic), which was shortlisted for last year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. He read a section from the latter where the main character, as his young self, is left by his father on the forecourt of a petrol station. The last word his father whispers to him in his ear is 'Kamchatchka', and he never sees him again. Intriguing stuff, set against the background of the Disappeared in Argentina.

Another IFFP-longlisted translator, Adriana Hunt, read a section of her translation of Veronique Olmi's Beside The Sea, with which she was won the same category. Her extract made me want to re-read the book and determined to see the play, on at the Southbank Centre in March. Published by indie Pereine Press last year, it was part of their Female Voice Series, which has been followed by The Man and currently the Small Epic. Their blog, penned by 'the nymph', is charming, their pop-up shops chic, and their literary suppers, well… I have yet to get along to one but I have high expectations. Do check them out.

The W G Sebald lecture was renamed in honour of the founder of British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), the late W G Sebald (1944-2001) who died ten years ago. 'Max' was a German writer who opted to live in the UK and continue writing in German, his most well-known work probably being Austerlitz. Sean O'Brien took to the stage after all the prizes had been awarded and gave a charismatic, modest, light-hearted lecture titled 'Making The Crossing: the Poet as Translator'; he was also incredibly knowledgable and thoughtful. Currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and a Vice President of the Poetry Society, he's a poet, critic, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He talked, most interestingly for me, about the translator of poetry being not a mediary but a poet themselves, spinning their own story as they weave together a target language with a source language. He said that this proactive attitude of a translator is 'wholly practical and necessary', as it is the quality of the outcome that is most important - the end product must in itself be a fine poem. He's okay with impurity, he's happy to be selective in his treatment of an original work, if it means that the translated poem is well crafted and lyrical, if it can live as a poem, rather than delivering a corpse, and sustain itself. An audio podcast of the full lecture will soon be available from BCLT

Claire Tomalin delivered a whistlestop tour of Charles Dickens' life on Monday 13 February, providing interesting biographical tidbits about the man who is everywhere at the moment. Apparently Dickens liked to use the nickname 'Dick' and was a jolly old chap who liked to drink a pint of champagne and a pint of sherry on a night out. Tomalin described him very much as a Regency Man, who enjoyed conviviality, fine clothes, dinners and parties - probably as a reaction to his impoverished childhood, when, as a result of his father being sent to a debtors' prison, he had to work in a blacking factory. Charles was much more careful with money, wrapping up small packages of his wages to ensure he had enough cash to buy his lunch throughout the week, and later in his life continued this need for control and order, by rearranging furniture in each hotel room he stayed in. Tomalin also touched upon Dickens' wife Catherine and lover Nellie, his good friend John Forster, and finally his charity work - he fundraised for children tirelessly, wrote about the ragged clothes in the poor houses, supported individual orphans and very practically told schools that they needed to supply areas for children to wash if they were going to be able to learn. He had a restless, prodigious energy, walking sometimes 20 miles a day - so a physical energy as well as a creative imagination that would run wild. He tended to write several novels concurrently, publishing them in serialisation, as well as then editing a weekly magazine and towards the end of his life, performing and acting.

And the fun doesn't stop there - we've got lots of exciting events coming up, including events for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and Letterbox Club at the Imagine Festival and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize at the Bath Literary Festival on 8 March.