Leap in the Dark 38

A Leap in the Dark 38   8pm  Saturday 8th August 2020

       Two Kevins and a funferal

The ‘funferal’ comes from Finnegans Wake, and the two Kevins are both Kevin Boniface, who marks the tenth anniversary of his fine blog www.themostdifficultthingever.com with two readings, one of new material written especially for this Leap, another of selected highlights from the past decade. We’ll have letters from Magaluf and Auckland thanks respectively to David Holzer and Oscar Mardell, and the welcome return (after last week’s triumph) of the mighty Wendy Erskine, who will subject David Hayden’s short story ‘Egress’ to a close reading, with the author on hand to respond.

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 Kevin Boniface’s tenth anniversary post 

3 Letter from Magaluf by David Holzer

4 Wendy Erskine’s close reading of David Hayden’s short story ‘Egress’

Interval 

5 David Hayden responds to Wendy’s close reading

6 Kevin Boniface - a second reading

7 Letter from Auckland by Oscar Mardell

8 The Pale Usher signs off

The Company

Kevin Boniface is an artist, writer and postman based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Over the years his work has taken the form of zines, exhibitions, artists’ books, short films and live performances. He is the author of Round About Town, published by Uniformbooks. kevinboniface.co.uk Ten years ago, on 3rd August 2010, he started a blog www.themostdifficultthingever.com and his appearance on this week’s Leap marks the anniversary.

Kevin Davey is the author of Playing Possum and the forthcoming Radio Joan, both published by Aaargh! Press. His non-fiction work includes the essay collection English Imaginaries (1999).

Wendy Erskine works full-time as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut short story collection, Sweet Home, was published in 2018 by Stinging Fly and in 2019 by Picador. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland. She also features in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4 Buy Sweet Home here: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/wendy-erskine/sweet-home/9781529017069

David Hayden was born in Ireland and lives in England. His writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Granta online, Zoetrope All-Story, The Dublin Review, AGNI and PN Review, in the Faber New Irish Writing anthology Being Various, edited by Lucy Caldwell, and on BBC and RTÉ radio. His first book was Darker With the Lights On.

David Holzer is a dedicated yogi, author, blogger and journalist. He founded YogaWriters and has taught workshops in yoga for writers in Mallorca, where he lives. Hundreds of people have taken his Yoga for Writers course on the DailyOm platform (www.yogawriters.org). His writing appears regularly in Om yoga and lifestyle magazine. David will be explaining why yoga is so beneficial for writers and taking us through a simple yoga sequence that can be done by anyone of any age in the comfort of a favourite chair.

Oscar Mardell is a teacher and writer - originally from South Wales, but currently living in Auckland, New Zealand. He is a frequent contributor to 3:AM Magazine, and poet of the month at The Inquisitive Eater. He is the author of Rex Tremendae - a ghost story set in the rubble of the Blitz, and Housing Haunted Housing - a collection of poems about Brutalist architecture, published June 2020 by the Manchester indie press deathsofworkerswhilstbuildingskscrapers

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a trilingual actor and writer. 

The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings.

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

  Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The next Leap in the Dark on Friday 14th August will become, for one night only, a Lark in the Deep, a plunge into all things aquatic which will feature, alongside our Friday regulars, the writers Emma Devlin, Melissa McCarthy and Isabel Waidner.

Stay well!

The Pale Usher