Peckham Literary Festival 2011

Monday 21st - Sunday 27th November 

Welcome to our FIFTH annual festival. A whole week of FREE events showing off the endless genius that is Peckham (and friends of Peckham!). Brought to you by...

   131 Bellenden Rd, SE15 and

   Persepolis, 28-30 Peckham High St, SE15

http://foratasteofpersia.co.uk/

This year we have received generous funding from Peckham Community Council.

Events take place at review or Persepolis. Please utilise the "Book Now" facility and send us your name, contact details and the number of spaces you want to reserve.

 

Events

• An Evening with Rumi

  Monday 21st November - 19:00PM - Persepolis

  This is the chap who wrote - "There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise." Sounds like Peckham, no? 

  Expect erudite discussion, music, poetry and...whirling dervishes. Yup, real ones (or one, our shop is fairly small). Following our interview with them earlier on this year http://persiainpeckham.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/persepolis-interviews-a-real-live-dervish/ and our delight in finding a group of them in West London, we've coaxed them over to show us how it's done. 

  

  Left, an actual dervish in Sally's actual shop.

• Simon Parke

  Tuesday 22nd November - 19:30PM - Persepolis

  Simon Parke, former vicar and author of Shelf Life, will be coming to talk to us. And maybe stock the shop up. You see, when he stopped filling pews for a living, he started stacking shelves at a supermarket. His book does for supermarkets what Zen and the Art of... did for motorcycle maintenance. The book is being made into a pilot for a new TV series. Simon Parke is very funny, and very clever. Don't miss him.

  For our amusement (and his own) Mr Parke even took a turn behind the till!

• Jon McGregor

  Wednesday 23rd November - 19:00PM - Review Bookshop

  Jon McGregor has written three novels. His most recent is Even the Dogs. He is also one of Britain's top five short story writers. Jon's story Wires took second place in the BBC National Short Story Award 2011 and is published in the anthology of the same name. His new collection of short stories, This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You, will be published in February 2012. He will read excerpts and answer your questions. 

     

  

   

  Jon presented us with one of his gorgeous limited edition letterpress "broadsides" of his story "That Colour", If you want one for yourself or someone else then you can buy one from him here ...

   http://jonmcgregor.bigcartel.com/product/broadside-that-colour 

  We gave him a "horror special" sound effects machine. If you want one of those then you can get one at the bookshop.

• 21st Century Dodos

  Wednesday 23rd November - 19:30PM - Persepolis

   What do you miss from the last century? Telephones with a real dial? Audio cassettes? Half-day closing? Steve Stack (this may not be his real name) takes us on a fond meander through some of the odder things that have appeared, and disappeared, in the 20th Century. A funny and whimsical book - and a perfect stocking filler. Please bring along any dated household objects which you'd like to discuss. Expect lively debate, and probably cake.

  ...because Steve loves cake. Which is most emphatically definitely not in the dodo category.

• Victoria Mosley

  Thursday 24th November - 19:00PM - Review Bookshop

  Victoria Mosley will read from her first novel Moonfisher. A romance and a ghost story set in present day London and Nazi occupied and Resistance France. It portrays the lives of women involved in espionage activity and the dangers they faced operating behind enemy lines and celebrates the heroic, and mostly unrecognised, part they played in the war effort.

  Victoria is a poet and has three published collections, The Dry Season, Crazy Love and As in a Dream. She grew up in Asia, is half-French and has lived in the Dordogne. As a poet and spoken word artist she has been Artist in Residence at the ICA, SOAS and Imperial College of London, and has toured for London Arts and the British Council.

  

  Victoria gave us an insight into the bravery and selflessness of women spies, especially that of the SOE women of F section directed from London which sent out 39 women agents - 13 of whom gave their lives. In the book Cecile is based around one of these women, codenamed Madeleine, who was shot at Dachau after months of torture and attempts to escape. Madeleine revealed nothing to her interrogators and her last act was to shout "Liberte".
   

• Dangerous Women

  Friday 25th November - 19:00PM - Review Bookshop

  Between them they know a lot about a lot of things and that makes them a fairly dangerous force to be reckoned with. Clare Conville, Liz Hoggard & Sarah-Jane Lovett offer humorous, sometimes ascerbic, but always practical advice on how to cope with Modern Life.  Clare Conville is a literary agent and discovered DBC Pierre on the Victoria line. Liz Hoggard is a columnist and interviewer for the Evening Standard and a dyed-in-the-wool Peckhamite. Sarah-Jane Lovett has run literary salons and presented The Bad Sex Awards.

  They learned that even dangerous ladies can be upstaged by a stand up vocalist!

• Edward Hogan

  Saturday 26th November - 19:00PM - Review Bookshop

  "Edward Hogan's voice is utterly distinctive: strong, emotive, haunting. His powers of observation seem almost supernatural...A major new talent." - Hilary Mantel

  Edward Hogan's first novel Blackmoor won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2009 and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. We were gripped by his new novel The Hunger Trace and expect he will read out loud some of the very best bits from it...

  ...and he did too. And we all learned that not only is he a talented writer, he is also a very funny man (in a "ha ha" way). And he didn't mind being sat in the naughty corner to read.

• Domestic Sluttery

  Saturday 26th November - 19:30PM - Persepolis

  Discover the shiny new art of Domestic Sluttery! The ladies from the highly acclaimed website http://www.domesticsluttery.com/ are coming along to talk about, well, domestic things. In their own inimitable fashion. Which involves not trying too hard, and drinking lots of gin. Their new book is truly a thing of beauty, packed with helpful hints, style tips, pretty pictures and fun. You WILL give it to all your female friends for Christmas (and maybe some of your male friends too).

  Heh, heh, not in those shoes my dear. Sian demonstrates how it's done...