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Event - Daisy Johnson & Julia Armfield with Octavia Bright

10.24.2019 by Pages of Hackney //

Daisy Johnson & Julia Armfield

Join us as we welcome Daisy Johnson and Julia Armfield to read from and discuss their recent books, EVERYTHING UNDER and SALT SLOW. Daisy and Julia will be joined in conversation by Octavia Bright of Literary Friction.

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge.

Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, Salt Slow considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely.

Winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018, Armfield is a writer of sharp, lyrical prose and tilting dark humour – Salt Slow marks the arrival of an ambitious and singular new voice.

Julia Armfield lives and works in London. She is a fiction writer and occasional playwright with a Masters in Victorian Art and Literature from Royal Holloway University. Her work has been published in Lighthouse, Analog Magazine, The white Review and Salt's Best British Short Stories 2019. She was commended in the Moth Short Story Prize 2017, longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Prize 2018 and is the winner of The White Review Short Story Prize 2018.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

It’s been sixteen years since Gretel last saw her mother, half a lifetime to forget her childhood on the canals. But a phone call will soon reunite them, and bring those wild years flooding back: the secret language that Gretel and her mother invented; the strange boy, Marcus, living on the boat that final winter; the creature said to be underwater, swimming ever closer.

In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but to wade deeper into their past, where family secrets and aged prophesies will all come tragically alive again.

Daisy Johnson was born in 1990. In 2018 she became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her debut novel, Everything Under. Her debut short story collection, Fen, was published in 2016. She is the winner of the Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize, the A.M. Heath Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She currently lives in Oxford by the river.

Octavia Bright is a writer and academic. She has written criticism, fiction, and poetry for a variety of publications. She co-hosts Literary Friction, a monthly literary talk show and podcast about books and ideas, with Carrie Plitt.

Tags // New Fiction, Short Stories

Event - New Daughters of Africa

03.28.2019 by Pages of Hackney //

New Daughters of Africa

Join us as we celebrate the publication of New Daughters of Africa, a major new anthology of writing by women of African descent, with a discussion between chef and writer Zoe Adjonyoh, award-winning author Patrice Lawrence, writer and activist Zita Holbourne, and poet and storyteller Jane Grell. Chairing the discussion will be the anthology's editor, Margaret Busby OBE.

Twenty-five years ago, Margaret Busby’s groundbreaking anthology Daughters of Africa illuminated the ‘silent, forgotten, underrated voices of black women’ (The Washington Post). Published to international acclaim, it was hailed as ‘an extraordinary body of achievement… a vital document of lost history’ (The Sunday Times).

New Daughters of Africa continues that mission for a new generation, bringing together a selection of overlooked artists of the past with fresh and vibrant voices that have emerged from across the globe in the past two decades, from Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA. Key figures join popular contemporaries in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them. Each of the pieces in this remarkable collection demonstrates an uplifting sense of sisterhood, honours the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and addresses the common obstacles women writers of colour face as they negotiate issues of race, gender and class, and confront vital matters of independence, freedom and oppression.

Custom, tradition, friendships, sisterhood, romance, sexuality, intersectional feminism, the politics of gender, race, and identity—all and more are explored in this glorious collection of work from over 200 writers. New Daughters of Africa spans a wealth of genres—autobiography, memoir, oral history, letters, diaries, short stories, novels, poetry, drama, humour, politics, journalism, essays and speeches—to demonstrate the diversity and remarkable literary achievements of black women who remain under-represented, and whose works continue to be under-rated, in world culture today.

Featuring women across the diaspora, New Daughters of Africa illuminates the richness and cultural history of this original continent and its enduring influence, while reflecting our own lives and issues today. Bold and insightful, brilliant in its intimacy and universality, this essential volume honours the talents of African daughters and the inspiring legacy that connects them—and all of us.

Zoe Adjonyoh is a chef, writer, and founder of Hackney-based pop-up Zoe's Ghanaian Kitchen. Her food has been widely celebrated following kitchen residencies across London as well as in Berlin and New York, in 2017 she published her debut book of Ghanaian recipes via Mitchell Beazley, and in 2018 she won the Culinary Iconoclast Award.

Patrice Lawrence is an award-winning writer, whose debut YA novel, Orangeboy, won the Bookseller YA Prize and the Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award and many regional awards. Her second book, Indigo Donut, was shortlisted for the Bookseller YA Prize, was Book of the Week in The Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer, and was one of The Times' top children's books in 2017.

Zita Holbourne is a writer, artist, and award-winning trade union, community and human rights campaigner and activist. She is the founder of the Roots, Culture and Identity arts collective which showcases the art of predominantly young black, Asian and migrant artists. She is also the Co-Founder and National Co-Chair of Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC).

Jane Grell is a poet and storyteller born in Delices, Dominica. She has worked extensively as both a teacher and professional storyteller to promote bilingual literacy through oral storytelling, and is also the author of several collections of poetry for children and adults.

Margaret Busby OBE is an award-winning writer, editor, critic, consultant, and broadcaster, who was also the UK's youngest and first black woman publisher when she co-founded Allison & Busby. In 1992 she compiled the groundbreaking anthology Daughters of Africa.

Tags // Essays, Feminism, Memoir, Politics, Race, Short Stories

Recommended - Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

10.26.2018 by Jo //

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
£12.99 / hardcover

Reserve

This mindblowing dystopian short story collection was written in response to the cruel prejudice of the US justice system and explores racism and capitalism in America. The prose is at once surreal, tender, brutal and full of wonder. It’s easy to see why this timely book is making waves. A must read.

As Nana Kwame says himself, ‘I’m interested in the way we dehumanise one another, and in our capacity for good despite the insidious hatred and fear all around us. These stories were tough to write. And yet in that space of difficulty and fear, I find necessity and purpose.’

Published by riverrun on 23rd October 2018

Categories // Recommended Tags // Dystopian Fiction, Politics, Race, Short Stories

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Tue 09

Live - The Manningtree Witches: A.K. Blakemore Live Tarot Interview with Jen Cownie

March 9 @ 19:30 - 21:00 GMT
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Live - Blueberries: Ellena Savage in Conversation with Kerri ní Dochartaigh

March 4 @ 19:30 - 21:00 GMT

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