Silas Hawkins introduces the show at Greenwich 21st December 2017 at West Greenwich Library
Our BSL interpreter never made it (pre-christmas traffic and lost keys played a part) so we are captioning the videos one by one, slow, tedious, but necessary.
When you are touring a book of short stories, and it’s an anthology, it’s usually fairly simple – who can get there to read? and then a bit of tweaking, so that we don’t end up with wall-to wall-fantasy from a book that is less than 30% that genre.
When it is a single author collection however, with 27 stories to choose from, it is more complicated. The discussion goes something like this:
Author: these are my favourites. (list of 12 stories)
Publisher: Yes. This is my favourite, let’s have this one too.
Author: Or this one?
Publisher: It’s a bit long, what about an extract? No more than 10 minutes.
Author: So from here – until the cliff hanger?
Publisher: Yes, but leave out that paragraph, it doesn’t make sense without the beginning,
Author: I love this one too.
Publisher: It’s a first person narrative of the opposite gender. But I can get an actor.
(long conversation full of stereotypes about the people likely to come to each reading, which stories are most representative of the book, balancing light and dark, how often the author is willing to read the same story… leading to a long short list)
Publisher: OK, so which do we read where? I think this one is a shoo-in for Greenwich, it’s set there. And this one is about werewolves so the reading that’s up the road from Monster Supplies?
Author: Yes, and the Alice in Wonderland one for Oxford. Do you think the Art installation is too obvious for Hackney?
Of course, on the day, sometimes, we change our minds – but a lot of thought goes into preparing a reading, to make it a professional enjoyable evening out for the reading (listening) public.
So here is a little quizzette for you.
Which stories are Liam Hogan, Carrie Cohen, Lisa Rose and Annalie Wilson reading where?
Match the story to the venue!
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Stars Temp To be a Hero Worming Advice For Werewolves Miscellaneous, Spooky, Weird Late Feathers Bring Rope The Burden Greenwich, Noon
Tuesday 25/04/2017 7pmLewisham Library, Lewisham High Street, SE13 6LG with Carrie Cohen reading one of the stories (free)
Wednesday 26/04/2017 7.30Burley Fisher bookshop, 400 Kingsland Road, Haggerston, E8 4AA with Carrie Cohen reading one of the stories (free)
Friday 28/04/2017 7.30Albion Beatnik Walton Street, Oxford, OX2 6AA (£2 on the door)
Thursday 04/05/2017 8pmWest Greenwich Library, Greenwich High Road, SE10 8NN with Lisa Rose reading one of the stories (free)
Wednesday 17/05/2017 7pmThe Story Sessions, Brockley Deli, 14a Brockley Cross, SE4 1BE with Annalie Wilson reading one of the stories. (free)
Here are a couple of video’s of Jennifer A McGowan reading and discussing her poetry from With Paper for Feet at our International Women’s Day event at Lewisham Library
Introduction to her fascination with witches
and her take on the witches from Macbeth, The Weird Sisters on the Make
You can next catch Jennifer reading her work at Retelling Tales, The Story Sessions, 7pm Wednesday 15th March, at The Brockley Deli 14a Brockley Cross SE4 1BE
and 7.30 Thursday 16th March at West Greenwich Library, Greenwich High Road, London SE10 8NN
Wednesday 17/05/2017 7pm