Meet the Neighbours: an evening of readings

Tues 3 June 2014
7.00 - 9.00pm
Sacred Café
The Studios
8 Hornsey St
N7 8EG

The event is free, book your place here
Readings will last approximately one hour with time for informal conversation after.
Come and meet the authors, hear them read and buy their books.

Featuring Chris Chalmers, Martina Evans, Melissa Harrison, Robert Minhinnick, Helen Smith.

Chris Chalmers is the author of Five To One, the story of the day a helicopter crashes on Clapham Common. It was the winner of a debut competition run by Wink Publishing and was long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize. It has been described as “A poignant study of genuine love in our big and fantastically diverse city.” Five To One is available as an e-book on Amazon. Another novel is to follow shortly.

Martina Evans is an Irish poet and novelist and the winner of the Betty Trask Award. She has published nine books of prose and poetry. Facing the Public, her fourth poetry collection was a TLS Book of the Year and received the Piero Ciampi International Poetry Prize in 2011. Petrol a dramatic prose poem was published by Anvil Press in September 2012. Martina will reading from her latest poetry collection Burnfort Las Vegas, published by Anvil this year.

Melissa Harrison will be reading from her debut novel, Clay (Bloomsbury, 2013) inspired by the streets (and people) around her home in South London. It won the Portsmouth First Fiction prize, was selected for Amazon’s Rising Stars programme and chosen by Ali Smith as one of her Books of the Year. Her second, At Hawthorn Time, will be published by Bloomsbury next spring. A nature writer as well as a novelist, Melissa is currently working on a short non-fiction book about rain.

Robert Minhinnick is an award-winning poet and author. His recent publications are The Keys of Babylon (Seren), New Selected Poems (Carcanet) and Island of Lightning. His second novel, Limestone Man will be published by Seren in 2015. He has twice won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and twice Wales Book of the Year. He will be reading from The Keys of Babylon, a collection of 15 linked stories that explore migrants’ lives and the people with whom they interact.

Helen Smith isa novelist and playwright based in London. She will be reading from Invitation to Die, one book in her Emily Castles mystery series, set in London. Last year, shortly after its publication, Helen reached the top spot on Amazon as America’s most popular mystery author. Her books have made number one on the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.