Stand-Up for Books

Posted on January 1, 2012 in Uncategorized

On a wet and windy Thursday and the Society of Young Publishers and the Society of Authors braved the weather and headed to a night of literary merriness at The Water Poet in Shoreditch. Filled with fairy-lights, large sofas and an accommodating bar, the venue was superb and had just the right amount of cosiness to it to make it feel like a really intimate setting.

The compere for the evening was columnist and author Lucy Mangan who introduced each of our guests.

Before the event, the Society of Authors ran a competition to get unpublished or unknown authors to submit their stories. Three winners were chosen and they got to share the floor with three published authors as they all took to the mic to deliver extracts of their texts and have informal Q&A sessions with the audience. The first winner to take to the floor was Karen Lee Street who read part of her crime novel, C. Auguste Dupin and the London Monster, set in Paris and London during the 18th century.

Next up was Matt Haig, whose novel The Radleys won the TV Book Club ‘Best Read’ in September and has been shortlisted for ‘Best Popular Fiction of the Year’ at the Galaxy National Book Awards. Alfonso Cuaron is producing a film of the novel. He kept us all entertained with his anecdotes of life as an author and decided to read from page 153 because he had been told ‘it was a good place to start’. When asked what had inspired him to write The Radleys he said he had been talking to a friend who wanted an idea for a film. He was on a train when he decided that he wanted to write a story that was a healthy mix of American Beauty and the Adams Family.

Third up on the floor was our second winner of the night, Barry Walsh who performed part of his spicy love story set in the 1960’s, The Pimlico Kid. With Billy as his main character he dived into the hormonal mind of a teenage boy and brought to light all the excruciatingly awkward stages of growing up.

Mark Billingham was next in the line-up and after very bravely admitted that some of us may recognise him from the TV show Maid Marian and has more recently being working as a TV writer and a stand-up comic. After sharing with us a short snippet from his serial killer novel he then had us all laughing by sharing some of the negative reviews he has received from an ‘anonymous society’ and how he chose to reply to them.

Our last short-story winner of the evening was Andrew Stevenson who wrote The Invisible Dream. Andrew worked for the BBC from 1970 as a documentary producer and director. In 2006 he stopped making films and became a writer, attending numerous creative writing courses and taking inspiration from Woody Allen and PG Wodehouse.

The night was a sell-out success and I’m definitely looking forward to the next joint event with the Society of Authors which is penned in the diary for 8 March 2012.

A picture of our guest authors along with SYP 2011 Chair Ella Kahn, Compere Lucy Mangan, Rachel O’Malley SYP 2012 Events Co-ordinator and Tina Mories 2011-2012 Events Team Leader.

Photo curtesy of Tina Mories.