A Leap in the Dark 39

A Lark in the Deep  Friday 14th August 2020

We’ll have canto XXII of Spring Journal by Jonathan Gibbs, read as usual by Michael Hughes, followed by the latest Letter from Dinan by Susanna Crossman. Then we’ll have The Translator’s Funeral, a new short story written and read by Rónán Hession.

After the interval A Leap in the Dark becomes A Lark in the Deep as three brilliant writers - Emma Devlin, Melissa McCarthy and Isabel Waidner - dive into the fluid issue of maritime gender. 

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 Spring Journal canto XXII by Jonathan Gibbs, read by Michael Hughes

3 Letter from Dinan by Susanna Crossman

4 The Translator’s Funeral 

  a new short story written and read by Rónán Hession 

5 ‘Revelation Apocalypse’ performed by Aea Varfis-van Warmelo

Interval 

6 Melissa McCarthy on Sharks, Death, Surfers

We encounter the world through surfaces: the screen, the page, our skin, the ocean’s swell. Here on the sea is the surfer, positioned at the edge of the collapsing wave. And lurking underneath, in a monstrous mirroring, is the shark. When the two meet, carving along the surface, breaking through the boundary, is when death appears

7 ‘It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.’ 

   The Pale Usher on Jaws

8 The Settee Salon: Emma Devlin, Melissa McCarthy and Isabel Waidner 

9 The Pale Usher signs off

The Company

Susanna Crossman is an award-winning Anglo-French fiction writer and essayist. She has recent/upcoming work in Trauma (Dodo Ink, 2020), Neue Rundschau, (S. Fischer, 2019), (translated into German), We’ll Never Have Paris, (Repeater Books, 2019), The Creative Review, 3:AM Journal, The Lonely Crowd, Berfrois and more. Co-author of the French book, L'Hôpital Le Dessous des Cartes (LEH, 2015), she regularly collaborates on international hybrid arts projects. Her debut novel Dark Island will be published in 2021. For more: @crossmansusanna http://susanna-crossman.squarespace.com/ 

Emma Devlin is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast. Her work has featured in Blackbird and The Bangor Literary Journal. She can be found on Twitter: @theactualemma. Her short story Home, Sisters won the 2019 Benedict Kiely prize.

Jonathan Gibbs is a writer and critic. His first novel, Randall, was published in 2014 by Galley Beggar, and his second, The Large Door, by Boiler House Press last year. He has written on books for various places including the TLS, Brixton Review of Books and The Guardian. He curates the online short story project A Personal Anthology, in which writers, critics and others are invited to 'dream-edit' an anthology of their favourite short fiction. Spring Journal is a response to the current coronavirus pandemic taking its cue very directly from Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal.

Rónán Hession is a writer musician and civil servant from Dublin. His debut novel Leonard and Hungry Paul (published by Bluemoose Books) has been nominated for the Irish Book Awards, British Book Awards, the BAMB awards, and long listed for the Republic of Consciousness prize. His third album Dictionary Crimes was nominated for the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year. He is currently completing work on his second novel Panenka, which will be published by Bluemoose in 2021.A third novel, Ghost Mountain, will appear in 2023.

Michael Hughes is the author of two novels: Countenance Divine (2016) and Country (2018) both published by John Murray, the latter winning the 2018 Hellenic Prize. Under his stage name Michael Colgan he recently appeared in the acclaimed HBO television drama Chernobyl.

Melissa McCarthy is a writer based in Edinburgh. Previous books that she has edited or coauthored include works on documentary filmmaking and on incarceration. She has worked as a film curator and arts journalist in London and Durban, South Africa. Her monograph  Sharks Death Surfers was published by Sternberg Press in 2019 and is available here: 

https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/sharks-death-surfers-an-illustrated-companion/ 

Amy McCauley is a poet and freelance writer. She is the author of OEDIPA (Guillemot Press, 2018) and 24/7 Brexitland (No Matter Press, 2020). Amy’s first full-length collection of poetry will be published by Henningham Family Press in 2021.

Isabel Waidner is a writer and critical theorist. Their latest novel We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (2019) was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Their first novel Gaudy Bauble (2017) was the winner of the Internationale Literaturpreis and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Waidner’s writing has appeared in journals including AQNB, The Happy Hypocrite, Frieze, and Tripwire. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), and an academic at Roehampton University, London.

The next Leap in the Dark is tomorrow (Saturday 15th August)and  will be curated by Laura Waddell of Tramp Press, the Dublin-based independent publisher founded in 2014 by Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff. In just six years Tramp Press has become Ireland’s leading indie press with a stunning roster of writers.  

Featured authors are:

- Doireann Ní Ghríofa (The Ghost in the Throat)

- Ian Maleney (Minor Monuments)

- Sara Baume (handiwork/A Line Made by Walking/spill, simmer, falter, 

  wither)

- Jack Fennell (editor of A Brilliant Void, an anthology of 

  Irish science fiction)

- Sarah Davis-Goff (Tramp Press co-founder and author of Last 

  Ones Left Alive (Tinder Press)

Join us on Saturday for an evening with the best indie press in Ireland.

Stay well!

The Pale Usher