Blimey! I'm being used as the poster girl for next week's (sold out) Literary Death Match event The Hospital Club in Covent Garden.
This event is sold out but you can sign up for the waitlist - as tickets become available you will be contacted:
Here's the lineup of THE READERS
PEOPLE OF ENDLESS INTELLECT! For our 9-year LDM anniversary on 18/3, we're heading to The Phoenix - for one of those dream nights that we so want you to be a part of. Another reason: some important people are slated to come, and if the place is packed, and you are your usual lit-loving delirious, that'll only help our cause (vagueries abound!).
Selling points: we've teamed with the wizards at The Borough Press to bring LIONEL SHRIVER (she wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin) to the stage and she is going to light it the expletive up, and we're nailing down our last two judges that'll make you super-happy to be alive.
Where: The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP
When: Show at 8:15pm sharp; doors at 7pm; afterparty after!
Tickets: £8 pre-order; £10 on the door
What is Literary Death Match? Four writers read their own work for seven minutes or less, and are then judged by three all-star judges. Two finalists are chosen to compete in the Literary Death Match finale, a vaguely-literary game to decide the ultimate winner.
JUDGES:
*Literary Merit: Lionel Shriver, author We Need to Talk About Kevin, Big Brother, So Much For That
*Performance: TBA!
*Intangibles: TBA!
READERS:
* Will Hodgkinson, rock & pop critic (The Times, Mojo), TV presenter, memoirist of The House is Full of Yogis
* Rosie Garland, performer, chanteuse, poet and writer of Vixen and The Palace of Curiosities
* Andrea Bennett, author of Galina Petrovna's 3-Legged Dog Story
* Matt Plampin, author of The Street Philosopher
Hosted by LDM creator Adrian Todd Zuniga & LDM Exec Producer Suzanne Azzopardi
http://www.literarydeathmatch.com/upcoming-events/march-18-at-the-phoenix.html
Thrilled that 'Now that you are not-you' is Guardian Poem of the Week!
"A very modern, secular kind of elegy reflects on death with a surprising lightness" - Carol Rumens
"This week’s poem is from What Girls Do in the Dark, the latest collection by the multi-talented Rosie Garland. It stands alone, while extending the narrative of the short poem that immediately precedes it, Stargazer. The setting of Stargazer is a hospital bedside, where the dying patient’s visitor must navigate “the vertigo tilt / of old words like spread, outlook, time.” That poem ends with the metaphors that will be reconfigured in Now that you are not-you. “Doctors / murmur the names of new constellations / - astrocyte, hippocampus, glioblastoma – and calculate / the growth of nebulae; this rising tide of cells that climbs / the Milky Way of the spine to flood your head with light.”
Read the whole article here...
7.30pm GMT
Join us to celebrate the launch of What Girls Do in the Dark by Rosie Garland, with guests Tania Hershman & Ian Humphreys
About this Event
Join Rosie Garland, plus guest writers Tania Hershman & Ian Humphreys to celebrate the publication of Rosie's new poetry collection What Girls Do in the Dark.
Thursday 12th November 7.30pm (GMT)
This event will be streamed live & can be viewed now, through the Nine Arches Press YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Z7yq1Ey_U&feature=youtu.be
I thought it wasn't possible to feel any more thrilled about joining Nine Arches Press
- then I see the stunning cover of my new poetry collection, 'What Girls Do In The Dark'.
Out October 2020
https://www.ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/what-girls-do-in-the-dark.html
Dystopian classics to modern crime - Nine must-read Manchester novels
“Fantasy, romance, sci-fi, comedy…we’ve got a genre for everyone
There’s a very good reason Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature, as we highlighted before its bid to join the prestigious network in 2017. Innovative publishers, diverse bookshops and a lively events scene make it an unrivalled literary melting pot.
Rosie Garland’s The Night Brother is our historical highlight
Ever the entertainer, Rosie Garland sung in post-punk band The March Violets and now performs ‘twisted cabaret’ as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. But she’s also a literary maverick with an array of essays, short stories and poetry to her name (much of which she also reads at spoken words events citywide) and three acclaimed novels. Her latest, The Night Brother, navigates themes of gender and identity through two siblings in Victorian Manchester. Rich and Gothic, it’s a must for fans of Angela Carter.”
https://confidentials.com/manchester/dystopian-classics-to-modern-crime-nine-must-read-manchester-novels
An unexpected & encouraging piece of news!
Northern Soul has selected 'The Night Brother' as a Best Northern Read
Desmond Bullen, Northern Soul writer
“In days that can seem desolate and uncertain, there’s a lot to be said for windows into a better world and, ultimately, joyfully, that is exactly the view that The Night Brother by Rosie Garland affords. Not that its window seat is cheaply achieved. Far from it.
Rooted with disbelief-suspending specificity in Manchester at the end of the 19th century, Garland’s novel blossoms compellingly from the exquisite simplicity of its central conceit, one which owes the tiniest debt to the 1971 horror film Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde. Edie and her brother Gnome are joined in a very particular symbiosis, so that their singular sibling rivalry threatens to be the undoing of both. Themes that could be leaden in other hands emerge from the premise with a beautiful lightness of touch, developing into a persuasive fable of inclusivity and self-acceptance. This is a book that sings a rainbow at its end.”
https://www.northernsoul.me.uk/books-best-northern-reads-part-one/