Sat 23 Sept, 4-5 pm, St Peter's Church, De Beauvoir Sq.
Your email confirmation is your ticket.
Tim Burrows, Alice Maddicott and Noreen Masud in conversation chaired by Jenny Chamarette
As Brexit, COVID, privatisation, refugee detention, and the collapse of public transport reshape our geographical relations, join three writers who are taking the map of England into their own hands to tell the stories inscribed by communities, ecologies and artists. Tim Burrows’ The Invention of Essex upends assumptions about our neighbour to show a county always on the frontline, from the Vikings to Windrush to Brexit, while Alice Maddicott and Noreen Masud roam more widely in Tender Maps and A Flat Place, in search of the feelings of place and the attraction of flatness, respectively, giving us mobile histories and their motives, from the sublime to resistance. Here will be where we meet.
Bios:
Tim Burrows has written about society, culture and place for the Guardian, New Statesman, Vice, the Daily Telegraph, Dazed & Confused, the Quietus and Somesuch Stories, among others. A recurring subject in his work is Essex and the Thames Estuary. His Guardian longread 'The Invention of Essex' appeared to widespread acclaim. His book of the same name was published by Profile Books in 2023 to rave reviews from Amy Liptrot (‘Evocative and smart’), Jonathan Meades (‘A stellar performance’), and Alex Niven (‘Tim Burrows is one of the finest and most humane writers on these islands’). He lives in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
Alice Maddicott is a writer and artist from the West Country. Her work spans poetry, creative non- fiction, writing installations and collaborative site-specific community projects. She is the author of Tender Maps, Travels in Search of the Emotions of Place, which is an exploration of atmosphere, the personality of places and how we map our lives in the world; the creative dialogues with land, home, art and the meaning of travel.
Noreen Masud is an author, broadcaster and academic based at the University of Bristol. Her memoir/travelogue A FLAT PLACE is published by Hamish Hamilton (UK) and Melville House (US), and her academic monograph on aphorism in Stevie Smith was published by OUP in 2022 She works on aphorisms, flatness, puppets and nonsense.
Jenny Chamarette is a writer, curator, artist and researcher. Jenny's nature memoir Q is for Garden on queerness and cultivation was shortlisted for the Nature Chronicles prize and Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, and longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize. An essay-length version of Q was published by Saraband. Elsewhere Jenny has written for the Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions.
Alice Maddicott headshot © Elizabeth Turner