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BookBlast® Waterstones 10×10 Tour
A CELEBRATION OF INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING
11 SEPT – 15 NOV 2018
A Nationwide Festival of Independent Publishing!
A carnival of authors, poets, translators and publishers, under the banner of trailblazing agency BOOKBLAST® created by Georgia de Chamberet, will be travelling to major cities across England, showcasing some of the finest independent-spirited literature and poetry being published today
THE BOOKBLAST WATERSTONES 10×10 TOUR will visit nine regions of England, celebrating risk-taking publishers who fill a unique niche in discovering talent. The tour connects London and the regions
This tour is about extraordinary writing. Writing that surprises, amazes and intrigues. Writing that challenges, disrupts and demands. Writing that is from the margins of culture portraying areas of life that the traditionalist mainstream often ignores. The tour will inspire readers, existing and new, to explore what’s happening in different parts of the world now, and to immerse themselves in the unfamiliar. Audiences will encounter writers from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. With these events, BookBlast® aims to unite people in the spirit of friendship and exchange.
THE BOOKBLAST WATERSTONES 10×10 TOUR launches in Waterstones Gower Street, located in the heart of Bloomsbury, London, followed by a series of themed talks, each one chaired by a small independent publisher, held in flagship regional branches of Waterstones over 9 weeks. It promises to be a hugely exhilarating celebration of the most electrifying prose and poetry being created today.
The 10 cities:
LONDON | NEWCASTLE | LEEDS | NOTTINGHAM | BRIGHTON | NORWICH | BRISTOL | BIRMINGHAM | LIVERPOOL | MANCHESTER
The 10 publishers:
DEDALUS LTD (English & European fiction) | BLUEMOOSE BOOKS (new fiction, new voices) | COMMA PRESS (groundbreaking short stories) | ISTROS BOOKS (books from the Balkans) | PEIRENE PRESS LTD (World literature in translation) | GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS (contemporary modernist) | HOPEROAD (African & Caribbean writing) | BALESTIER PRESS (contemporary Asian) | CARCANET PRESS (poetry) | SAQI BOOKS (writing from the Middle East)
The supporting partners:
The Writers’ Centre (Norwich) | New Writing North (Newcastle) | The Society of Authors (London) | Birmingham Literature Festival (Birmingham) | The Publishers’ Association (London) | Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature (Nottingham) | The Children’s Bookshow (London)
BookBlast® Waterstones 10X10 TOUR LISTINGS
LONDON
Tuesday 11 SEPT – Waterstones 82 Gower Street, London W1
Theme: Independence: A Permanent Revolution.
Eric Lane DEDALUS, chair
WITH author, Andrew Crumey (The Great Chain of Unbeing) & translator, Margaret Jull Costa (ten books by Eça de Queiroz).
NEWCASTLE
Wednesday 12 SEPT – Waterstones Newcastle
Theme: The Northern Influence on Books & Culture.
Kevin Duffy BLUEMOOSE BOOKS, chair.
WITH authors, Dan Micklethwaite (The Less than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote) & Colette Snowden (The Secret to not Drowning)
LEEDS
Thurs 20 SEPT – Waterstones Leeds
Theme: Birmingham & Leeds: A Tale of Two Cities.
Sarah Cleave COMMA PRESS chair.
WITH authors, C.D. Rose (The Book of Birmingham) & Ian Duhig (The Book of Leeds).
NOTTINGHAM
Thurs 27 SEPT – Waterstones Nottingham
Theme: The End of the World? How the Balkans writes the Holocaust.
Susan Curtis ISTROS BOOKS chair.
WITH translator, Christina Pribićević-Zorić (The House of Remembering and Forgetting by Filip David, Serbia); (Doppelgänger by Daša Drndiç, Croatia) & translations editor, Georgia de Chamberet.
BRIGHTON
Thurs 4 OCT – Waterstones Brighton
Theme: Inside Out: Voices of the Diaspora in Contemporary Europe.
Meike Ziervogel PEIRENE PRESS chair.
WITH translators, Jamie Bulloch (The Last Summer by Ricarda Huch) & Nashwa Gowanlock (Shatila Stories).
NORWICH
Thurs 11 OCT – Waterstones Norwich
Theme: All Hail the New Modernists! Experimentalism & Contemporary Literature.
Sam Jordison GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS chair. WITH authors, Alex Pheby (Lucia), Paul Standbridge (Forbidden Line), Paul Ewen (Francis Plug: Writer In Residence).
BRISTOL
Thurs 18 OCT – Waterstones Bristol
Theme: Trading Places: Bright City, Dark Secrets.
Rosemarie Hudson HOPEROAD chair.
WITH authors, Peter Kalu (Silent Striker) and Qaisra Shahraz (The Concubine & The Slave Catcher).
BIRMINGHAM
Thurs 25 OCT – Waterstones Birmingham
Theme: The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write.
Elizabeth Briggs SAQI BOOKS chair.
WITH authors, Nafeesa Hamid, Aliyah Holder (The Things I Would Tell You edited by Sabrina Mahfouz).
LIVERPOOL
Thurs 1 NOV – Waterstones Liverpool
Theme: #MeToo Moments: taking an unvarnished look at men behaving badly in China.
Roh-Suan Tung BALESTIER chair.
WITH author Yan Ge (The Chilli Bean Paste Clan) & her translator Nicky Harman.
MANCHESTER
Thurs 8 NOV – Waterstones Manchester
Theme: Claiming the Great Tradition: Women Recalibrate the Classics.|
Michael Schmidt CARCANET chair.
WITH poets, Jane Draycott (trs. Pearl) & Jenny Lewis (Gilgamesh Retold).
Get your TICKETS from this page linking through to all shop events THE BOOKBLAST® 10×10 TOUR, in association with Waterstones.
10×10 TOUR SPONSORS
Waterstones is the UK and Ireland’s leading high street bookseller with 283 shops, and it employs over 3,000 booksellers. Waterstones is the only national specialist book retailer of scale in the UK, with the average sized shop carrying a range of around 30,000 individual books and with over 200,000 titles in the largest shop.
The Miles Morland Foundation offers African Writing Scholarships for African writers. Calling all African writers! For details about how to enter please visit the foundation’s website at milesmorlandfoundation.com
For more information about the 10×10 tour, or about BOOKBLAST® / @bookblast contact: SUE AMARADIVAKARA, PR COLLECTIVE sue@prcollective.co.uk / @SueA1001
Combining the promotional reach of a marketing agency with the expertise of a literary agency, BookBlast® ensures maximum visibility and impact for its clients
We are dedicated to promoting books, authors, translators and independent publishers at home and abroad. Combining the the promotional reach of a marketing agency with the expertise of a literary agency, we ensure maximum visibility and impact.
A creative company established in 1997, the BookBlast® mission is to foster cultural understanding by breaking or relaunching quality writing and a multitude of voices from around the world into the mainstream.
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