Tuesday 25th February
6.30-9pm
6.30pm doors open
7-8pm discussion followed by a Q&A
8-9pm drinks
Join us to celebrate Gloss by Kyra Wilder. Kyra will be in conversation with Suzanne Joinson.
Kyra Wilder’s second novel, Gloss, transposes the Greek myth of the Hesperides into a contemporary psychological thriller with feminist bite.
In Marin County, California, apple farmer and charismatic cook Lee Lotan runs an alternative therapy programme at Golden Apples Farm for young adults suffering from eating disorders. Lee’s seemingly benevolent, unconventional methods are told in a back-and-forth narrative by three of his young charges – Ari, Eleni and Hesper – as they prepare to reunite a year after first meeting each other at Golden Apples in order to testify at his trial. At the same time, the trio suffers the long-term effects of conditioning and mind control. As the novel reaches its climax, the girls discover the mind-boggling negligence of a Kafkaesque justice system.
Kyra Wilder grew up in the Pacific Northwest and went on to study at the Culinary Institute of America. She cooked in restaurants in California and New York and was the pasta-maker in Michael Tusk's now Michelin-starred restaurant Quince, before receiving her BA and MA in English Literature from San Francisco State University. She continued working in restaurants before moving to Switzerland with her young family, where she wrote her critically acclaimed first novel Little Bandaged Days (2020). She has had poetry and articles published in The Paris Review, Literary Hub, and McSweeney’s.
Dr Suzanne Joinson is a reader in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. She is an internationally published, award-winning writer and academic. She has published two novels (A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar and The Photographer’s Wife (Bloomsbury 2012,2016), a chapter in A History of English Georgic Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and a memoir, The Museum of Lost and Fragile Things (The Indigo Press, 2024). In addition, she has published a wide range of articles, essays and reviews, and regularly writes for a number of publications including The New York Times, The Guardian and many more. Her books are translated into fourteen languages, she was a National Bestseller in the US, won the New Writing Ventures Award (2008) and was longlisted for the IMPAC.