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Shout LGTB Festival - November

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:

Becoming Drusilla at Shout

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:

The Writers Toolkit

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