Friday, May 23, 2008

Salt reading at Manchester Central Library

So there we were on Thursday in the impressive wood-panelled committee room in Central Library, with its amazing marbled fireplace, four authors all published by Salt, Carys Davies, Andre Mangeot, Shamshad Khan and yours truly. The audience, though smallish, was a great one, laughing gratifyingly in all the right places - at Carys's wry story Boot about a dog who gets the better of his owners, at my satirical story The Shooting Script about a conman arts worker - and murmuring appreciatively at the touching story which Andre read from A Little Javanese (which had only come from the printer's the previous day!). And we all sat spellbound as Shamshad had the lights turned out and then, in the dimness, wove her customary performance magic with her voice and the words of her poems.

First off was Carys reading from her fantastic collection Some New Ambush:


Next up was Andre:


















Because Shamshad read in the dark we didn't get any photos of her reading from her poetry collection Megalomania, so here she is afterwards chatting to me:


Finally, I read from Balancing on the Edge of the World, and here below is an instructive photo for all writers, reminding you to get your hair out of your face when you're reading, and try not to gurn when you're doing the characters!













And here we are chatting afterwards:

2 comments:

Tania Hershman said...

Looks like a great time was had, wish I could have been there. Lovely wood panelling, too! I hope you sold many, many books.

Elizabeth Baines said...

Wish you could have been there too, Tania! In the pub afterwards, too...