Never have the nuances of hunger been more widely anatomised over chardonnay and kettle chips.If Helen Dunmore is in any way affected by her new-found status, or her massive readership, she doesn’t show it. “I don’t know any writers who really think about the external life of their books while they’re writing,” she tells me with a shrug. “It’s the job of the writer to write and it’s the job of the reader to read.” It’s a job she has taken seriously since she was a child. It was The Siege, too, which won her a place in the caf?and kitchens of Middle England, as darling of that publisher’s pot of gold, the reading group. Last year, it was picked as the set text for Bristol’s annual “Great Reading Adventure”. It was Dunmore’s third novel, A Spell of Winter, which won the inaugural Orange prize and shot her into the major league, but it was The Siege that placed her firmly on the international stage.

Dunmore’s novel, portraying one of the most painful, and significant, periods in Russian history, has just been broadcast in the very city in which it was set It’s hard to imagine a greater accolade. For many writers, to scale the peaks of Book at Bedtime would be quite thrilling enough, but these were not the cosy, curl-up-with-your-cocoa tones of Radio 4 This was Radio Petersburg and the extracts were in Russian. Perhaps the next show, planned for November, could have shorter screenings, or easier movement from one auditorium to another.. Helen Dunmore wept when she heard extracts from The Siege on the radio. Live on stage, she moves in front of a dark screen, while Radvan draws squiggles that are projected on to her body.Her white dress shows the lines clearly; the squiggles linger like the movement in a blurred photograph.

The collaboration is interesting, but though Ramamurthi moves elegantly, her dance is unfocused.So many short works are hard to take in. Meyer-Keller does with appalling Delia Smith efficiency, her apron smeared with cherry gore.Rajyashree Ramamurthi made made one film and one live performance. In The Incomplete Autobiography, a girl dances as Ramamurthi remembers childhood incidents. Some combinations are sharp: as the girl swings her arms through Indian classical dance movements we hear the sound of a Star Wars light sabre.In Avatar, Ramamurthi collaborates with animator Jeremy Radvan. There is a “yes, and?” quality to some of this work: you can see the point being made, but that’s it.This might also apply to Eva Meyer-Keller’s Death is Certain, but the performance piece is at least funny. Meyer-Keller is an unexpected element in the evening: she makes no reference to screens, to films, to computer technology Instead, she does awful things to cherries. She starts out with a neat table of household goods, puts on an apron and gets to work.Some of the cherries meet their fate simply: squished, eaten, dropped into a cup of water.