Firestation Update

So, the Firestation Book Swap is really starting to shape up nicely. Our first night is on Thursday August 20th at 8pm. Tickets are £5 and are on sale now!

For those who missed my original post, the Book Swap will be a regular monthly literary event taking place at The Firestation, a lovely arts venue in Windsor. Hosted by myself and novelist Marie Phillips, it will essentially involve us sitting down on a sofa with a bunch of guests from the world of books and chatting about, well pretty much anything. The emphasis is very much on getting to know the authors so rather than having them read from their books we will engage them in banter about all manner of other things - music, cake, gossip - and hopefully it will end up a rather endearing, if chaotic, night for all concerned.

Oh, and then we have the book swap bit. Everyone who comes along is required to bring a book with them, one they don't want any more. During the evening they will get to swap it for another book, ideally one they do want.

Lots of other audience participation as well, including the Question Jar into which you can plop a question about absolutely anything except books. It shall be regularly dipped in to throughout the evening.

We have almost sorted our line up, just waiting on one person who wants to do it to 100% confirm, and we have some amazing authors who are up for the September and October events.

The people we can announce are, we think, rather exciting.

Jessica Ruston is the author of Luxury, a sleek and sexy new blockbuster with a brain. She comes from exlempary literary stock and is not backwards in coming forwards so will certainly be up for a good chat. If possible we want each event to feature at least one debut or up-and-coming writer alongside more established names. Jess is currently the former and will most certainly become the latter.

Alongside Jess, and ensuring that I won't be completely outnumbered by attractive women (thank the lord!), will be Robert McCrum. Robert is currently associate editor of the Observer and was that illustrious publication's literary editor for a decade or so, prior to which he spent 20 years as editor-in-chief at Faber and Faber, working with authors such as Paul Auster, Peter Carey and Milan Kundera. He is also the author of several books including a biography of PG Wodehouse, an account of his recovery from a stroke and a number of novels. He is now a regular blogger at the Guardian.

I really hope that lots of you will make the effort to come along. We'd love to see you there. Windsor is really easy to get to from London, directions to the venue are here.

Tickets are £5 and are available from the box office right now. I have no idea how they will do but will report back if they start selling, as the saying goes, like hotcakes. We will shortly be setting up a Twitter feed and a Facebook page. Links galore once they are up and running.

Do please spread the word.

Comments

[DJ Kirkby]

We would love to be there but Windsor is a bit far away from Portsmouth. We'll wait for the travelling road show :)