Friday 22nd September 6-7:15pm UK time  

                                                          LIVE ONLINE

                               Join us to celebrate the publication of

      

              My Weil by Lars Iyer 

A scathingly funny look at a group of quirky graduate students majoring in Disaster Studies who are forced to reconsider their cynicism when they confront a new student who, remarkably, has the same name as the 20th Century Catholic mystic philosopher Simone Weil

My Weil follows a group of twenty-something PhD students of the new-fangled subject Disaster Studies at an i
nferior university in Manchester, England, the post-industrial city of so much great music and culture. They’re working class, by turns underconfident and grandiose (especially when they drink) and are reconciled to never finishing their dissertations or finding academic jobs.

Into their midst arrives Simone Weil, a PhD student, a version of the twentieth century philosopher, who becomes the unlikely star of their film. Simone is devout, ascetic, intensely serious, and busy with risky charity work with the homeless. Valentine, hustler-philosopher, recognises Simone as a fellow would-be saint. But Gita, Indian posh-girl, is what’s with Simone’s nun-shoes? And Marcie (AKA Den Mom), the leader of the pack, is too busy with her current infatuation, nicknamed Ultimate Destruction Girl, to notice.

The narrator, Johnny, who was brought up in care and is psychologically fragile, and deeply disturbed by the poverty of his adopted city, gradually falls in love in Simone. But will his love be requited? Will Simone be able to save the souls of her new friends and Manchester itself from apocalypse?

Programme

1. Introduction by Tom Clayton of Melville House

2.  Lars Iyer’s first reading

3.  Lars and Tom in conversation

4.  Joy Division 'Isolation': 

5.  Vik Shirley reads poems inspired by Ian Curtis / in conversation with Tom Jenks of zimZalla

6.   Joy Division 'Ceremony': 

7.   Lars and C.D. Rose in conversation

8.   Lars gives a second reading

9.   Q&A

7:15  End

Contributors notes (in order of appearance)

Tom Clayton

Tom Clayton is Publishing Manager at Melville House UK. He is the author of When Quiet Was the New Loud: Celebrating the Acoustic Airwaves 1998-2003 (Route Publishing, 2021) and was the lead researcher and writer for Messing Up the Paintwork: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark E. Smith (Ebury, 2018). He lives in St. Leonards-on-Sea.

Lars Iyer

Lars Iyer is a Reader in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where he was formerly a longtime lecturer in philosophy. He is the author of the novels in the Spurious trilogy (Melville House, 2011-13) and more recently, the widely acclaimed Wittgenstein Jr. (Melville House, 2014) and Nietzsche and the Burbs (Melville House, 2019). He lives in Newcastle.

Vik Shirley

Vik Shirley is a poet, writer and editor from Bristol now living in Edinburgh. Her publications include The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN) and Corpses (Sublunary Editions). Strangers Wave: Joy Division Photo Poems (zimZalla) and Notes from the Underworld (Sublunary Editions) are forthcoming this Autumn. She has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal from the University of Birmingham.

C. D. Rose

C. D. Rose is author of The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure (Melville House, 2014), Who’s Who When Everyone Is Someone Else (Melville House, 2018), The Blind Accordionist (Melville House, 2021), and the forthcoming story collection Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea (Melville House, 2024). He lives in Hebden Bridge.