A Leap in the Dark Saturday 6th June

A Leap in the Dark 20   8pm  Saturday 6th June 2020

           An evening with Galley Beggar Press

The Norwich-based Galley Beggar Press is one of Britain’s leading independent publishers, with a spectacular cohort of authors. Tonight co-founders Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar will introduce ten of their writers in an evening of readings, music, performance and conversation.

There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, but please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust.

The Programme

1 The Pale Usher welcomes you

2 Sam Jordison and Eloise Miller

3 Paul Stanbridge

4 Alex Pheby

5 Isha Karki

6 Gerry Feehily

7 Susanna Gendall

8 Toby Litt 

Interval 

9 Paul Stanbridge (reprise) 

10 James Clammer

11 Preti Taneja  

12 Paul Ewen - a message from Francis Plug

13 Vijay Khurana 

14 Sam and Elly in conversation

14 The Pale Usher signs off

The Company

James Clammer is based in Sussex, where he writes in a shed at the foot of the South Downs. His children's novel, Why I Went Back, was longlisted for the Branford Boase Award and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. His debut adult novel, Insignificance, will be published by Galley Beggar Press.

Paul Ewen is a New Zealand writer based in south London. His work has appeared in the British Council's New Writing anthology, the Guardian, the TES, Tank, and Five Dials. Paul's first novel, Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2014. It went on to appear on numerous Books Of The Year lists, won a Society of Authors McKitterick Prize, and was described as "inspired" by The Sunday Times, whose reviewer also called it "a brilliant, deranged new comic creation... the funniest book I've read in years." 

Gerry Feehily is a London-born, Ireland-raised author and journalist based in Paris. An arts critic on national French radio station France Culture, he is also the English site editor at presseurop.eu and looks after the Ireland desk at Paris weekly Courrier International. He frequently appears on French television and radio to talk of Irish and European issues. His first novel, Fever, was published in 2007.

Susanna Gendall is a New Zealand writer and translator currently based in Paris. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Sport, JAAM, Takahē, The Spinoff, Matchbook, Geometry and Ambit. Her debut collection is due to be published next year. 

Sam Jordison co-founded Galley Beggar Press. He writes for the Guardian, has written several works of non-fiction  the best-selling Crap Towns series and Enemies Of The People, a book that was tragically right about everything and the awful people who have been wrecking our lives since 2016. 

Vijay Khurana has been a radio presenter on Australia’s triple j and a journalist for Germany’s Deutsche Welle. His writing has been published in Australian journals including Seizure and The Lifted Brow. His children’s chapter book, Regal Beagle, was published in 2014. He is currently completing a collection of short stories as part of a masters in creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. His project ‘A Little Death – Having Some Fun With a Modernist Climax’ features rewritings of James Joyce’s story ‘The Dead’ in the styles of other writers, and is forthcoming on creative criticism site The Bee.

Isha Karki writes and lives in London. She is the winner of the 2019/2020 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize and Mslexia Short Story Competition. Her stories appear in Lightspeed Magazine, The Good Journal, 3 of Cups Press’ On Relationships, and have been shortlisted in The London Magazine Short Story Prize, London Short Story Prize, and Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize. She is a 2019 graduate of Clarion West and is currently working on her first collection of short stories. @IshaKarki11

Toby Litt grew up in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. He has worked as a teacher, bookseller and subtitler. A graduate of Malcolm Bradbury’s Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia, Toby is best known for writing his books – from Adventures in Capitalism to Lilian's Spell Book – in alphabetical order; he is currently working on ‘P’. He is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a regular on Radio 3’s The Verb. His story ‘John and John’ won the Manchester Fiction Prize, and his most recent short story collection, Life-like, was shortlisted for the Edgehill Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. Toby teaches creative writing at Birkbeck College. His memoir, Wrestliana, was published by Galley Beggar Press in May 2018. Galley Beggar also publishes his acclaimed novel Patience (2020).

Eloise Miller's first novel Wednesday's Child was published in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Youngminds Award. She co-founded and co-directs Galley Beggar Press.

Alex Pheby was born in Essex and moved to Worcester in his early childhood. He currently lives with his wife and children in London, where he teaches at the University of Greenwich. Alex's second novel, Playthings, published by Galley Beggar Press in 2015, was shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize. Lucia (2018) was joint winner (with Murmur by Will Eaves) of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize. His next novel Mordew will be published by GBP next month.

Paul Stanbridge grew up in Essex. He has worked as a pensions administrator, bookseller, receptionist, waiter, archival catalogue editor, chef, barman, ministerial drafter, learning mentor and builder. He has also written a doctoral thesis examining creative method in literary modernism and divides his working time between music and writing. Forbidden Line, his first novel (published by Galley Beggar Press in 2016), was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott First Novel Prize and won the first novel category in the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Prize, 2017. His online ‘immaterial text’ The Encyclopedia of St Arbuc can be found here. His next novel is My Mind to Me a Kingdom is, which will be published by Galley Beggar Press.

Preti Taneja was born and grew up in the UK, and now teaches writing in prisons and in universities. We that are young (2017) was a book of the year in The Sunday Times, Spectator and the Guardian; it has been translated into multiple languages and is published in North America by AA Knopf. It is currently in development as a  TV series with the makers of 'Narcos'. We that are young has been nominated for several international awards including the Rathbones FOLIO Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, India's Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski. It won the Desmond Elliot Prize for best debut 2018. 

Tonight she will be speaking about the writer Jeet Thayil and giving a reading from Fulcrum NO. 4, an edition in which Thayil edited a selection of 56 Indian poets under the title Give the Sea Change and It Shall Change.

The next Leap in the Dark will be on Friday 12th June and features:

- Canto XIII of Spring Journal by Jonathan Gibbs, read by Michael Hughes

- Guru Dave’s weekly yoga session (like pilates with a Vegas-era Elvis)

- Lockdown culture: Roland Bates on Pound’s Cantos

- poems, prose and performance on the subject of time to mark the 90th 

  anniversary of Samuel Beckett’s Whoroscope, with contributions from  

  Joanna Walsh, Kevin Boniface, Neil Griffiths and others

And on Saturday 13th June we dedicate the entire evening to Samuel Beckett’s poetry, with readings in English, French and Spanish from contributors in Dublin, London, France and Mexico City. 

Joining us to pick the bones out of this less well-known aspect of the great writer’s oeuvre will be Alba Arikha, June Caldwell, Susanna Crossman, Michael Hughes, Susan Tomaselli, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo and Frank Wynne.

Stay well!

The Pale Usher