You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Haynes and Tempest among authors at Picador showcase
Natalie Haynes and poet Kae Tempest were among the authors at Picador’s showcase at Hackney Town Hall on 28th March.
The event showcased some of Picador’s upcoming fiction, non-fiction and poetry publications, showcasing debut authors such as Cecilia Rabess and the return of well-known writers like Nina Stibbes.
Mary Mount introduced the event for the first time as publisher at Picador with Alex Clarke hosting the night.
Haynes opened the evening by introducing her new non-fiction book Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, the follow-up to Pandora’s Jar, by relating the story of Athena and Arachne.
Rabess spoke with Clarke about her debut novel Everything’s Fine, a love story between Jess, a liberal Black woman, and Josh, a white conservative. The novel asks the reader whether love should conquer all.
Stibbes’ novel One Day I Shall Astonish The World was published last year and now the writer returns with a collection of diary entries in Went to London, Took the Dog: A Diary. Stibbes read a portion of the book detailing her landlady’s obsession with watering the garden and an "engorged" garden hose.
Susannah Dickey read from her debut poetry collection Isdal which explores the links between fetishism and true crime, the fascination with female victims, sex and death. The title is taken from the discovery of a unidentified woman’s body in Norway by a young girl, her father and her sister in 1970.
Emma Donoghue took to the stage with a PowerPoint to show part of her research for her upcoming novel Learned By Heart, inspired by Ann Lister, her copious letters, her first love Eliza Raine and their fleeting but impressionable relationship.
Reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson celebrated the influence of his wife on his collection of prose writings in Time Come: Selected Prose which draws upon Johnson’s Jamaican roots and Caribbean history.
The evening closed with special appearance from Kae Tempest who read from their new poetry collection Divisible By Itself and One. A 10 minute reading, without break between poems, ended with rapturous applause.
