Catching up on recent literary events:

On Sunday I went to Carol Ann Duffy's 'Shore to Shore' tour of poets at Caernarfon's Galeri, a really wonderful event attended by hordes, which I've written about on my other blog. It was a horrible rainy night, as horrible as rainy nights can be in this part of North Wales (I'm looking out at the trees whipping around and the rain batting on my window just now), but nothing could damp this event, and it was a bright and heartening two hours in the midst of our depressing political situation.
Information about the tour can be found here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the launch in Southport for Carys Bray's new novel, The Museum of You. After a walk on the immense beach, which I had never been to before - the sea so far away you could hardly see it - I turned up at Broadhurst's bookshop with beach mud on my shoes and splashed on my trousers. The event was lovely. The Museum of You is the story of a young girl who knows nothing about her dead mother since her grieving father won't talk about her, and who tries to piece together her mother's life in a 'museum' of objects stored in the spare room. The book sounds wonderful and Carys made the evening even more special with little gift bags containing objects featured in the novel, and cakes decorated with their shapes. Broadhurst's Bookshop also did an impressive and apt window display.

At the beginning of June I was in London at another launch, that of my long-time colleague Jane Rogers for her new novel, Conrad and Eleanor. Another lovely evening, this time in Hatchard's in Piccadilly: it was a hot evening and there was prosecco (my favourite!) and a super reading from what looks like a really very impressive novel about the effects of time on a marriage.

Really looking forward to reading both books.