Shout LGTB Festival - November
The news! I always neglect the news.
Thursday 7th October – Birmingham Books Festival
19.00 Birmingham Conservatoire
Tickets (5 pounds) and more information available here:
Richard Beard in conversation with John Boyne and Janette Jenkins
I haven’t seen John and Janette together for fifteen years, since we were at UEA together. When Malcom Bradbury died I wrote 24 Hours with Malcolm Bradbury for the Paris Review, but otherwise haven’t been a great revisitor of that time. However, I’m looking forward to playing David Dimbleby to Janette’s Bolton Joanna Lumley and John’s John Boyne. The last time I saw John he generously stood in at a Dublin reading when I came down with chicken pox hours before the event.
Wednesday 25th November – SHOUT Festival
19.30 Birmingham Library Theatre, Paradise Place
Tickets (5 pounds) and more information available here:
Shout is Birmingham’s Festival of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Culture. Dru and I do a reading which is more a kind of double-act – we read from the book but we do our own dialogue. Dru reads out the bits she wrote and I read out some other bits. We then have lots of questions at the end which are nearly always exclusively for Dru. As if I mind.
Dru recently discovered some unseen photos of the Becoming Drusilla walk.
Saturday 21st November – The Writer’s Toolkit Conference
10.00-16.00 South Birmingham College, Digbeth
Tickets (29 pounds) and more information available here:
What it says on the tin:
‘Subjects covered include Understanding Publishing, Pitching Ideas, Social Networking for Writers, Working with the BBC, Writing with Communities, Promoting Poetry, Working with Agents and Writing in the Digital Age. Other individuals and organisations involved include Arts Council England, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, Arvon Foundation, National Association of Writers in Education, BBC Radio Four, The National Academy of Writing and Bloodaxe Books.’
NAW Readings, October
At these events I shall be introducing the highly talented writers from The National Academy of Writing, who will be reading from their work.
Entry is free but tickets should be booked:
Thursday 8th October
18.00 Birmingham Conservatoire
Postgraduate Poetry Platform – Poets in Performance
Wednesday 28th October
18.00 Birmingham Conservatoire
Emerging Talent – National Academy of Writing Showcase