Authors Electric

This post is the result of a confluence of Karen's wonderful post about where we read and a photographic series I'm doing over on tumblr . And a lifelong crush on Lucinda Lambton. It's where many of us do much of our reading. And it's the only room in the house to have spawned a whole genre designed to be read in it (Schott's Miscellany, 21st Century Dodos etc). Yet we rarely celebrate the place itself. So here's to the literary loo. The three specimens on this page are from three of the shows I've performed at lately. And in each case it's a fabulous indicator of the show itself. 93 Feet East in Brick Lane is home to FULLFAT , a fabulous spoken word night run by Orange Prize judge, former Oxford University Poetry Society President, and stunning poet Clarissa Pabi. It's edgy, loud, full of fire and passion and one of those atmospheres that feels like it could explode at any moment into something spontaneous and remarkable. The night I was on the bill...

So I was talking to some of the lovely people here about bookstores, and saying how I was lucky to have a great relationship with not one but two of my local stores, The Albion Beatnik and *the* Blackwell’s , both in Oxford. And I was saying how both relationships had been forged not despite what I do online with ebooks and all kinds of things digital, but because of it. They said that’d be a really good thing to blog about, the way embracing digital can work for the author and the store. (l-r me, slam poet Lucy Ayrton, Sophia Satchell-Baeza of Dissocia , and Oxford International Women's Festival and Oxford Pride poetry MC Anna Hobson pose outside The Albion Beatnik for the poster for This is Oxford , wherein we take over Blackwell's for the night on October 18th) And I thought yeah, fantastic, and I can talk about some great shows I’ve got coming up at those stores at the same time. Only. How could I possibly talk anything else when we’re two days away from one of the...