Archive for February, 2011
Spring Thing Programme Out Now!
1 year ago
It’s here – the Spring Programme.
See the tabs above or click here
Please note we have changed our Box Office Services. We will no longer be using Birmingham Box Office. From now on we will be using The Ticketsellers. Tickets can be booked via this website (click on the links on the event listing) or by calling 0844 870 0000. More information about this change is available here.
We hope to see you there!
Writer Networking Meeting
1 year ago
Sunday April 10th 2011
Writer Networking Meeting
Free! No need to book / 2-3.15pm / Seminar Room, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Guest Speaker: Stuart Evers.
Are you a writer living or working in the West Midlands? Come along and meet others, drink tea and discuss ideas. Stuart Evers is a former editor and bookseller turned fiction writer.
You can access his blog at the link above, or follow him on twitter, @stuartevers.
With thanks to Writing West Midlands.
Still to come this week
1 year ago
Unfortunately, we have to announce that the Wilbur Smith Event has been unavoidably cancelled. We had been looking forward to this event as much as you, so it is to our great disappointment that Wilbur won’t be joining us this Wednesday evening. For any of you that purchased tickets for the event, you can claim a refund by contacting the Box Office.
You can, of course, still get tickets for the fantastic Mo Hayder, who joins us on Thursday evening.
Thursday 14th April 2011
Mo Hayder: Hanging Hill
£6.50 / £5 / 7pm / Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Supported by Birmingham Libraries
In Mo Hayder’s latest novel sisters Sally and Zoe find themselves in situations worse than they had ever imagined. Married to a successful business man, Sally is a dreamer, whereas her sister Zoe is her polar opposite. A detective inspector working out of Bath Central. Zoe loves her job, and oozes self-confidence. No one would guess that she hides a crippling secret that dates back twenty years, and which – if exposed – may destroy her.
Fortunes change though and when Sally’s daughter has fallen into difficulties, and finds she needs cash – lots of it – fast. Sally finds herself divorced and penniless with her teenage daughter to support. Now, the only way to survive is to do things she never thought possible, to go places she never knew existed… With no one to help her, Sally is forced into a criminal world of extreme pornography and illegal drugs; a world in which teenage girls can go missing.
Both sisters are intent on survival until one does something so terrifying that there’s no way back… A story so chilling you’ll be thankful it isn’t yours.
Mo has written some of the most terrifying crime thrillers you will ever read. Her first novel, Birdman, was hailed as ‘a first-class shocker’ by the Guardian, and her follow-up, The Treatment, was voted by The Times one of the top ten most scary thrillers ever written. Mo Hayder is one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed of contemporary British crime thriller novelists, admired by her peers and eagerly followed by her readers.
Mo’s books are 100% authentic, drawing on her long research with several UK police forces and on her personal encounters with criminals and prostitutes. She specialises in confronting criminal acts head-on in her writing, fearlessly tackling the darker side of life where many turn away. Hayder has taught creative writing and is now a full-time author at the peak of her talents.
With thanks to Transworld Publishers.
BOOK ONLINE or call 0844 870 0000
Mo Hayder: Hanging Hill
1 year ago
Thursday 14th April 2011
Mo Hayder: Hanging Hill
£6.50 / £5 / 7pm / Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Supported by Birmingham Libraries
In Mo Hayder’s latest novel sisters Sally and Zoe find themselves in situations worse than they had ever imagined. Married to a successful business man, Sally is a dreamer, whereas her sister Zoe is her polar opposite. A detective inspector working out of Bath Central. Zoe loves her job, and oozes self-confidence. No one would guess that she hides a crippling secret that dates back twenty years, and which – if exposed – may destroy her.
Fortunes change though and when Sally’s daughter has fallen into difficulties, and finds she needs cash – lots of it – fast. Sally finds herself divorced and penniless with her teenage daughter to support. Now, the only way to survive is to do things she never thought possible, to go places she never knew existed… With no one to help her, Sally is forced into a criminal world of extreme pornography and illegal drugs; a world in which teenage girls can go missing.
Both sisters are intent on survival until one does something so terrifying that there’s no way back… A story so chilling you’ll be thankful it isn’t yours.
Mo has written some of the most terrifying crime thrillers you will ever read. Her first novel, Birdman, was hailed as ‘a first-class shocker’ by the Guardian, and her follow-up, The Treatment, was voted by The Times one of the top ten most scary thrillers ever written. Mo Hayder is one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed of contemporary British crime thriller novelists, admired by her peers and eagerly followed by her readers.
Mo’s books are 100% authentic, drawing on her long research with several UK police forces and on her personal encounters with criminals and prostitutes. She specialises in confronting criminal acts head-on in her writing, fearlessly tackling the darker side of life where many turn away. Hayder has taught creative writing and is now a full-time author at the peak of her talents.
With thanks to Transworld Publishers.
BOOK ONLINE or call 0844 870 0000
John Hegley: The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet
1 year ago
Sunday April 10th 2011
John Hegley: The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet
£8.50/£6 / 8pm / Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
A brilliant evening of performance poetry and comedy to mark the end of the Spring Thing – join us, and John Hegley, to end the weekend in style..
Tales about a Frenchman with some unusual [but clean] habits, which include burying his dog’s kennel and his own luggage pieces.
The stories appear alongside other new works, which include an address to aliens on the subject of transport, a poem about a non-talking parrot, and some animal impersonations with the aid of a handkerchief.
Suitable for most people over seven.
The audience are invited to sing along. But not to dance. Much.
Hegley is known as a poet and singer with a common and comedic touch, hence the quotation from The Observer, ‘Awesomely mundane’
‘Typically brilliant songs and stories about a Gallic small-town hero with a dog called Chirac’
The Guardian
The poet Adrian Mitchell said of him:
’Just because he is one of the funniest men alive, do not
underestimate his dedicated gentleness.’
And The Luton News said that his lyrics,
‘…quite often make little sense’
BOOK ONLINE or call 0844 870 0000
The Birthday Party – Nine Arches Press are 3!
1 year ago
Sunday April 10th 2011
The Birthday Party – Nine Arches Press are 3!
£6.50/£5 / 5.45pm / Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Celebrate the third birthday of West Midlands-based independent poetry press, Nine Arches Press, with a special showcase of their most recent poets and publications. Since 2008, they have published 16 collections, 7 copies of Under the Radar magazine, and gained 4 national and regional prizenominations. They also run events, workshops, open mics and readings.
Join poets Myra Connell, Luke Kennard, Ruth Larbey and Claire Crowther to blow out the candles! (www.ninearchespress.com)
CLAIRE CROWTHER
Claire Crow
ther’s two collections, Stretch of Closures and The Clockwork Gift (Shearsman Books), have been received with wide acclaim, and have been followed up be her Nine Arches Press pamphlet, Mollicle. She was born and grew up in Hobs Moat near Solihull. Mollicle is zesty, mysterious and mischievous, the ordinary world turned kaleidoscopic and rearranged in Crowther’s distinct and elegant fashion.
ther’s two collections, Stretch of Closures and The Clockwork Gift (Shearsman Books), have been received with wide acclaim, and have been followed up be her Nine Arches Press pamphlet, Mollicle. She was born and grew up in Hobs Moat near Solihull. Mollicle is zesty, mysterious and mischievous, the ordinary world turned kaleidoscopic and rearranged in Crowther’s distinct and elegant fashion. Praise for Mollicle:
“Claire Crowther’s work is wittily compelling, a complex music. Poems by Crowther are events. With equal power, Mollicle reflects the outer world and the mind’s life, intensely illuminated.
day and night, repay your loan:
shine with sun’s compulsive light. ”
- Alison Brackenbury
“Claire Crowther’s poems employ what seems to be a singular form of logic – each one is like a mirror she has handed you in which you see something familiar, yet in a way you hadn’t managed to see before.”
– Roddy Lumsden
RUTH LARBEY
Ruth Larbey was born in Cyprus, and grew up in Nottingham, Hong Kong and rural Cumbria. She has spent her last two years working at an international development charity in London, after completing her MA at Warwick University in 2008. Funglish is her debut pamphlet of poems, and is a maiden voyage alive with the simple thrill of exploration, re-imagining liminal spaces into new territories vibrant with possibility.
Praise for Funglish
“There’s a drastic incandescence to Ruth Larbey’s syntax which pulls you into her poetry. Writing with an edgy control reminiscent of Emily Dickinson, her poems create exacting ‘electric constellations’ of vision and nerve in which no word is wasted, no darkness left unexplored. As Dickinson wrote, ‘A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.’ Ruth Larbey’s language is alive and gravid.” - David Morley
LUKE KENNARD
Luke Kennard won an Eric Gregory award in 2005 for his first collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers (Stride Books). His second collection of poetry The Harbour Beyond the Movie was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007 making him the youngest poet ever to be nominated for the award. His criticism has appeared in Poetry London and The T
imes Literary Supplement. He is currently reviewing fiction for The National.
Luke Kennard’s Planet-Shaped Horse is an unhinged black-comedy poem-play from one of contemporary poetry’s most unique voices. Both terrible and beautiful things happen. Hermits and doctors are not what they seem and neither Miranda nor Simon seem capable of reining in or reforming their unreliable narrator…
Praise for Luke Kennard:
His language is exciting and it feels to me that he’s a truly 21st-century writer, taking inspiration from all over the place, unafraid of barriers and conventions. – Ian McMillan, The Times
Inventive, academically aware, fearless and hugely enjoyable.
– Nick Laird, The Telegraph
Luke Kennard writes vibrant, original poems that stick in your mind for a long time and enliven your imagination.
- Sophie Hannah
MYRA CONNELL
Myra Connell’s second collection of poems, From the Boat, was published by Nine Arches Press in 2010. Her poems have appeared in various magazines, and her short stories in two collections from Tindal Street Press, Her Majesty and Are You She?
She lives in Birmingham and has two grown-up sons.
From the Boat comes from a time of waiting, of mourning, and of finding small consolations. They are, many of them, small poems, the opposite of heroic. Bare, spare in mood, and exploring a sense of dislocation and disorientation, they look coldly at what is left when almost everything is pared away.
Myra Connell’s poetry is measured yet generous; experimental and adventurous; sharp, often angry, and yet tender.
BOOK ONLINE or call 0844 870 0000
Reading with Tindal Street Press
1 year ago
Sunday 10th April 2011
Reading with Tindal Street Press
£6.50/£5 / 4pm/ Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Join Tindal Street Press for a reading group of sorts – a chance to meet some of the writers they are publishing this year and discuss their new books – Paul Wilson and David Belbin. Tindal Street have a reputation for uncovering remarkable fiction – this year’s cast of characters are no exception.
Paul Wilson’s novel is titled The Visiting Angel. Care worker Patrick Shepherd has been struggling for as long as he can remember: orphaned, mourning a brother, and battling each day to rebuild the lives of the broken residents of his halfway house. But when he’s called to talk a man named Saul down from a ledge, Patrick’s world is suddenly shocked back into life. Saul looks exactly like Liam, Patrick’s brother, whom he thought was dead.
Dissolute, charming and uncannily perceptive, Saul says that he’s an angel on a mission to heal the fragile souls of a very particular list of people: Sarah, a GUM clinic nurse trapped by her own grief; Tusa, an HIV positive asylum seeker afraid to lose her last vestige of hope; and Edward, accused of murdering a lost child. Saul must help them weave the frayed edges of their lives back together again.
But for Patrick to understand the meaning of this visitation, he first must face his traumatic childhood in the council orphanage, Providence House, and the terrifying betrayal that tore the brothers apart.
Praise for Paul Wilson:
The equal of Graham Swift at his best
— Independent
David Belbin’s novel, Bone and Cane, is set in Nottingham in 1997. Sarah Bone is a Labour politician with a hidden radical past, about to face the election battle of her life. She also has a radical ex-boyfriend, Nick Cane, just released from prison for growing and selling cannabis. They’re brought together again when Sarah campaigns successfully for the release of Ed Clarke, a wrongfully imprisoned ‘murderer’, only to be sexually assaulted on the night she celebrates his release with him. Is she responsible for a terrible injustice?
Nick’s life is strangely bound up with Ed Clarke’s: inmates in the same prison and now working illegally for the same mini-cab firm. Will the old chemistry spark as Nick and Sarah work together to expose Ed Clarke’s guilt? As the election of a generation heats up, Bone and Cane’s convictions are tested to the limit.
With thanks to Tindal Street Press. 
GET THE BOOKS FIRST! You will soon be able to buy Paul and David’s books directly from Tindal Street – watch this space..
Book Online or call 0844 870 0000
Workshop: Creating Characters with Paul Dowswell
1 year ago
Sunday 10th April 2011
Workshop Creating Characters with Paul Dowswell
£23/£17/ 3.15-5.45pm / Seminar Room, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
How do you invent believable, interesting and rounded characters in children’s and adult fiction? Writer Paul Dowswell will explore basic rules, first or third person, back story and motivation.
Paul writes historical fiction for Bloomsbury Publishers.
Book Online or call 0844 870 0000.
The Edible Garden: Alys Fowler
1 year ago
Sunday 10th April 2011
The Edible Garden: Alys Fowler
£6.50/£5 / 2.15pm / Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Growing your own is, says Alys Fowler, ‘a powerful political gesture about our oil-reliant food chain’.
In this timely new book, Gardeners’ World’s thrifty and resourceful Alys Fowler shows that there is a way to take the good life and re-fashion it to fit in with life in the city.
Abandoning the limitations of traditional gardening methods, she has created a beautifully productive garden at home in Kings Heath where tomatoes sit happily next to roses, carrots are woven between the lavenders and potatoes grow in pots on the patio. And all of this is produced in a way that mimics natural systems, producing delicious homegrown food for her table. And she shares her favourite recipes for the hearty dishes, pickles and jams she makes to use up her bountiful harvest, proving that no-one need go hungry on her grow-your-own regime.
Good for the pocket, good for the environment and hugely rewarding for the soul, The Edible Garden urges urbanites everywhere to chuck out the old gardening rules and create their own haven that’s as good to look at as it is to eat.
Book Online or call 0844 870 0000
World Book Night in Birmingham
1 year ago
World Book Night
Birmingham Libraries are arranging some events to celebrate World Book Night on 5th March 2011 – featuring some of Birmingham’s great writing talent, Mike Gayle, Catherine O’Flynn and R.J.Ellory. See their flyer.. Celebrate World Book Night in Birmingham . There is also ‘poetry, laughs and free books’ outside the library after the main event – so join them and many other writers for a celebration of readi
ng and writing. Good stuff!
The Spring Thing
We haven’t forgotten, by the way, that there is a Spring festival coming up… here is a little taster of the flyer we are printing for you as we speak…
You’re all desperate to know what’s in the programme – well, we can tell you that it includes workshops (including one with the amazing Project Pigeon), events, including with David Lodge, John Hegley, and Sophie Hannah, poetry, including a birthday party for the lovely Nine Arches Press and an exciting audio installation in the Central Library, Bodies In The Library.
You can follow Bodies on twitter (@_ears_wide_open) .
There are also ‘festival extra’ events including with the delightful Mo Hayder…
So you have the dates, you have the web address… your interest is piqued… what now?
We are busily uploading all of the events (all 22!) onto this site so that you can book your tickets. We hope to have this function available on Monday 21st February at the latest. That’s only a few days away.
While we wait, we would like to take the opportunity to thank the Spring Thing’s sponsor, Newman University College, Birmingham. Newman have long been supportive of our work and continue to get enthusiastic about our events and activities. Their staff and students will be around at the Spring Thing, involved in various ways, and they will be manning a stall, too. Feel free to pop by and talk to them, or visit www.newman.ac.uk
