A live online Bloomsday gathering

 Sunday 16th June at 7pm UK time

On the 16th June we celebrate Bloomsday (of course) with American authors Lee Klein and P. J. Blumenthal (who will, for one night only, be known as Mr Bloomenthal). They'll be joined by the publisher Jacob Smullyan the poet Simon Barraclough (making a welcome return) and, from Dublin, Joycean Caroline Hett with news of a remarkable discovery.

Lee will be reading from and discussing his new fiction Like it Matters, P.J. will introduce his new novel Winston Hewlett's Impotence and Simon will be reading from his new collection Divine Hours. Full details below.

If you're not already on the guest list and would like to join the audience please leave your full name and email address at the end of this blog.

Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel by Lee Klein

Every Bloomsday, six male writer reader drinker friends gather at a bar to talk about life and literature and to celebrate the idea of the masterpiece more than the masterpiece itself. All are frustrated to the point of desperation. But this Bloomsday will prove different: one of the most celebrated younger writers in the world, with the power to potentially unlock their careers, is expected to join them.

Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel is about ambition, creation, delusion, success, failure, submission, acceptance, rejection, idiocy, anger, idealism, persistence, and the excessive consumption of exceptional beer. It’s also about walking and reading, the gestation of literary and literal offspring, and the joys and sorrows of writing with intent to publish.

Since graduating from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2006, Lee Klein’s stories, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in Harper’s, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, and many other sites, journals, and anthologies. He is the author of The Shimmering Go-Between: A Novel (Atticus Books) and Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters from the Eyeshot Outbox (Barrelhouse Books), and translator of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador (New Directions), for which he received a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Award. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and daughter.

Winston Hewlitt's Impotence by P. J. Blumenthal 

Santa Barbara—1970s AD. One morning, Winston Hewlett, mid-30s, idle, wealthy, disaffected, finds he can’t do it anymore. This frightening discovery leads him down a rabbit hole into an unknown world populated with pop-psych groups, mad doctors, roughneck bikers, venues of sexual ambiguity, and the secret agents of a secret society. The frantic quest for his lost potency culminates in a zany chase scene through Disneyland where, pursued by goofy assassins, he stumbles onto the hidden meaning of that place. Finally, this odyssey leads to its goal: a direct confrontation with the truth behind his predicament.

P.J. Blumenthal is an American writer living in Munich, Germany. He is the author of a nonfiction book on feral man, Kaspar Hausers Geschwister (Kaspar Hauser’s Siblings), as well as a German-language blog, “Der Sprachbloggeur.” Three volumes of his poetry have appeared in the USA so far: A Lusty Romance, Poems for Readers and Slow Train to Cincinnati.

You can pre-order both books direct from the publisher here:

https://www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/like_it_matters/

 https://www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/winston_hewletts_impotence/

Divine Hours by Simon Barraclough

Simon Barraclough was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, to an Irish mother who was a nurse and a Yorkshire father who built gear boxes for tractors and was a successful brass band composer. Eclectic, crucial books in the house were Ulysses, Ian Fleming thrillers and Arnold Silcock's humorous poetry anthology, Verse and Worse.

After studying English at Nottingham University, Barraclough gained an MA in Critical Theory from Sussex and then decided against pursuing a PhD, preferring to write instead. His first collection, Los Alamos Mon Amour, was published by Salt in 2008 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

He is published widely in poetry magazines, including Poetry Review and The Manhattan Review, and his work has been broadcast on BBC Radio.

Buy Divine Hours direct from the publishers Broken Sleep Books:

https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/simon-barraclough-divine-hours

Caroline Hett is an independent scholar with a particular interest in the Irish modernist titans James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. She joins us from Dublin with an exclusive report on a noteworthy discovery that will appeal to all Joyceans.