Note: new sessions will be added - check back for more information.
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Event |
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11.00 - 1.00pm |
Young adult agent surgery, with Penny Luithlen
By popular demand, Penny returns for a drop in meet-the-agent session for anyone currently writing or interested
in young adult fiction. The Luithlen Agency is the only writers’
agency in the East Midlands, specialising in young adult fiction. Its writers include Robert Swindells, Bali Rai, David Belbin,
Maxine Linnell, Dan Tunstall and others.
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11.00 - 11.40am |
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Mark Patterson, author of Roman Nottinghamshire, takes a wider look at the Roman
impact on the East Midlands landscape in this illustrated talk that might just mention the
Fosseway. Mark Patterson is a journalist and WEA tutor.
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Do we have a responsibility to our readers? Or should
we simply publish and be damned?
A young adult panel with Dan Tunstall, Maxine Linnell (Leicester writers both published by initially by
Five Leaves and now A & C Black) and Kimberley Redway
(currently running a young adult fiction competition and planning her first anthology).
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"Let me tell you a story..."
We celebrate St Patrick’s Day by looking at Irish and British short stories, and discuss why
they are so popular in Ireland, and yet held in scant regard in Britain. This session with
Deirdre O’Byrne will also look at some of the best short stories from each country.
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Crystal Pamphlets launch
Crystal Clear Creators, arts organisation
and small publisher, launches its new series of pamphlets by up-and-coming writers from the East Midlands:
Roy Marshall, Hannah Stevens, Andrew "Mulletproof" Graves, Aly Stoneman, Charles G Lauder Jr and Jessica Mayhew.
New voices in poetry and storytelling.
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TBA
Details to be announced - please check back
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12.00-12.40pm |
“… the terrible things that happen in war,
and not only on the battlefield”
John Lucas - editor of a forthcoming collection of poetry on WWII - discusses the fiction of
that war, and writing fiction on the war, including his own recent novel Waterdrops. John Lucas
is also the publisher at Shoestring Press.
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“Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possess.”
It might have worked for Ken Dodd, but how do you become happy and what’s so great about it anyway?
Suryacitta Malcolm Smith (author of Happiness and How It Happens) and
Will Buckingham (Introducing Happiness: a practical guide) explore the puzzles,
paradoxes and pleasures of happiness.
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The East Midlands Book Award readings
The East Midlands Book Awards is
a significant book prize for the best book by an East Midlands writer published in the previous year.
We will have readings from the shortlisted books, by some of the shortlisted writers.
Note: the shortlist will be announced soon. Check back for final line up
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Horror! Nasty stuff! Scary stories!
From Roald Dahl to Stephen King, children and adults love stories about bogeys and dismembering.
Nicola Valentine (author of The Haunted) leads a discussion on why we like to be horrified.
Please leave your bogeys at home though.
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Revenge will come, riding on a bicycle
Candlestick Press has become one of the region’s success
stories, publishing short and very saleable poetry pamphlets on themes… revenge, love, gardens,
bicycles and more. In this session, Jenny Swann will talk about researching her themes, and
read from the best published so far.
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1.00-1.40pm |
The future of the book and the book industry
A panel discussion with Rachael Ogden (Inpress Books,
which represents 36 independent publishers from this country, Ireland and, in one case Russia); Charles Boyle (poet
and novelist, who used to work for Faber and now runs CB Editions,
publishing poetry, novellas and books in translation).Chaired by Pippa Hennessy (Five Leaves Publications).
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From there to here - stories of exile
Leicester Quakers have formed
their own press. Their publications include From Somalia to Europe, a book that has already become a play.
They will be joined by David Belbin, author of the recent Secret Gardens, a children’s story about refugee
life in Nottingham and Lincolnshire. This event is in support of Leicester becoming a
City of Sanctuary.
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Nine Arches poetry reading
Nine Arches, from Birmingham, are one of the
country's up and coming presses. Today’s readings will be by Deborah Tyler-Bennett, author of the intriguingly titled Mytton...Dyer...Sweet Billy Gibson and Maria Taylor, author of the equally intriguing
Melanchrini, which, to save you guessing, is Greek for dark-featured. Both writers will include information
about their writing processes and being published.
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New fiction from Pewter Rose
Nicky Harlow’s Amelia and the Virgin is a comic tale, set in Liverpool in the 1980s, of a
teenage girl who believes she is pregnant with the new Messiah. By contrast, Terri Armstrong’s Standing Water
finds a man returning to Western Australia for his mother’s funeral, to find the family farm close to ruins, which brings long-held secrets to the surface.
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TBA
Details to be announced - please check back
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2.00-2.40pm |
It was the best of times...
Hard to avoid Dickens this year. Phil Cox (De Montfort University) leads off a panel discussion on
aspects of Charles Dickens' work with some comments on early dramatic representations of Dickens. He will
be joined by John Lucas who will talk about the visual and the verbal (“Phiz and Boz go pop”?) - Dickens
as a writer and Hablot Knight Browne as his illustrator.
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Way beyond The Well of Loneliness -
contemporary LGBT fiction
The Well of Loneliness was an early lesbian classic, its title suggesting that past lesbian and
gay life was hardly a bed of roses. Here, Victoria Oldham from Bold Strokes presents a more positive and exciting present with Rebecca Buck (author of
The Locket and the Flintlock and other books), Andrea Bramhall (Ladyfish) and Kevin Troughton
(Straight Boy Roommate)
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Happenstance: the deleted scenes
Happenstance are a go-ahead Scottish publisher,
specialising in chapbooks/pamphlets, now with a growing East Midlands and UK-wide roster. Today’s readings are from
Robin Vaughan-Williams (The Manager), Peter Daniels (Mr Luczinski Makes a Move), Tim Love (Moving Parts),
Sally Festing (Salaams). This session will also discuss editing, and cutting!
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Breaking In, a play from Off the Fence
Written by Adrian Reynolds, Breaking In examines relationship, jealousy and identity in a one-room
drama first performed in London and at Nottingham Playhouse in 2005, and recently re-worked by the playwright.
Jill and Greg book into a hotel for the night, and history impacts on the present as their pasts are revealed
layer by layer.
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Byron: the first rock star?
200 years after Byron made his maiden speech in Parliament (in support of the Luddites) and 200 years since the publication
of his Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Christy Fearn suggests he was the first rock star, with a lifestyle to match - as
well as being an inspiration for modern rock stars.
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3.00-3.40pm |
Bring the past to life?
Increasingly writers are working with museums, galleries and other public spaces to bring new dimensions to old objects.
This panel discussion will be led by poet and publisher Jacqui Rowe, who has worked with the National Trust and Warwickshire Museums.
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The realities of power: coercion and consent
in the contemporary state
This talk, by Stuart Price, is based on his recent books (Brute Reality and Worst-Case Scenario).
It examines a simple proposition: that the current social order is based on a very strange kind of consent - one
that is built into a system that is more authoritarian than genuinely democratic.
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Get writing, get creative
Undergraduate and postgraduate Creative Writing students
at De Montfort University perform their poetry, prose and scripts.
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The Home Game - sporting poetry readings
Kevin Fegan and Sue Dymoke limber up for the Olympics with - in Kevin’s case, an illustrated reading from his
The Away Pitch, which explores people’s sporting lives, and - in Sue’s case, readings from Not Just
a Game, the newly reprinted anthology of sporting poetry which covers sports from cricket to skittleball.
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TBA
Details to be announced - please check back
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The programme may be subject to changes and additions on the day - don't forget to pick up a day programme on arrival.
