Sat 23 Sept, 12-1 pm, St Peter's Church, De Beauvoir Sq.
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James Clarke, Gurnaik Johal & Naomi Pearce in conversation, chaired by Mazin Saleem
2023 began with the publication of Mark Hyatt’s Love, Leda by Peninsula Press. Celebrating Hyatt’s lost-and-found London, we’re joined by three writers whose recent books are rewriting the city: Gurnaik Johal listens in to the secrets of Southall whispered in hidden lives and languages in We Move, while James Clarke and Naomi Pearce reimagine London’s wild artistic 1970s in relation, respectively, to Lake District communes in Sanderson’s Isle, as Clarke’s protagonist takes a trip through hippy England, and modern-day Hackney redevelopment, where a contemporary artist connects to the complex intimacies of an artists’ studio’s past in Innominate. Expect revelations.
Bios:
James Clarke was born in Manchester and grew up in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire. His debut novel The Litten Path won the 2019 Betty Trask Prize. A collection of stories, Hollow in the Land, followed in 2020. Some of these stories appeared in Granta, Banshee, Ambit, the Manchester Review and the Lonely Crowd. His third novel, Sanderson's Isle, was published by Serpent's Tail this summer.
Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London. We Move, his debut collection, won the Tata First Book Award and includes ‘Arrival’, winner of the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize.
Naomi Pearce is a writer living in West Wales who, when not working, likes reading mystery novels and wandering around bogs. Her essays and fiction have been published by Art Monthly, The Happy Hypocrite, Kunstverein Munich, MIT Press and The White Review, amongst others. Forthcoming projects include Good Bad Books (programmed with Anna Bunting-Branch), a workshop and event series exploring the imaginative spaces of genre fiction held at the Barbican, London. Her first novel, Innominate, will be published by MOIST on 30 July 2023.
Chair:
Mazin Saleem is a writer from Manchester, UK. His first novel, The Prick, came out in 2019, and he is a regular book and film critic for Strange Horizons, the Tribune, Little Atoms and more. His short fiction has been published at such places as 3AM Magazine, Litro Magazine and Minor Lits, and he also writes a substack about the arts called Artless.
Naomi Pearce headshot © Jess Gough