Join us at the Crow Salon for a wonderful evening when novelist Kerry Andrew and Leah Broad discuss their latest books with one another. It’ll be a book reading and signing, as well as a relaxed chat about their common link of music, composing and the importance of listening and hearing.

It has been a damp and cold six months but finally things are warming up and to add to the rise in temperature, we welcome two very different authors in conversation about two very different books, but with entwined themes of talent, sexuality and presence.

A musician as well as writer, the dextrous Kerry Andrew never fails to bewitch us with their skill at composition and story-weaving. This time, we are initially invited to observe an unusually blended band of siblings who explore their relationships within the increasingly sensual atmosphere of the south of France in heady summertime. However, things are about to get an awful lot more dark and strange…

The musicologist Dr Leah Broad has “rare gift” according to the FT. Certainly here she uses her own considerable skill to turn the spotlight on four exceptionally gifted women who transformed the topography of popular classical music. Shockingly, their fame and accomplishments were drowned out over time by louder, shall we say deeper voices. But Dr Broad is passionate about reinstating these pioneering composers upon the musical landscape.

With both books stuffed full of resonance, queerness, resurrection and creativity, there will be a pretty potent vibe at the bookshop and cold drinks may well be required. An evening not to be missed.

Leah Broad is an award-winning writer, presenter and broadcaster, and author of the critically acclaimed Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World.  Quartet won the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Storytelling, a 2023 Presto Books of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023. It has been hailed as ‘a new kind of music biography’ (The New York Review of Books) and ‘a stellar work of social and music history’ (Kirkus Reviews). As a journalist Leah won the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, and since becoming a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2016 she is frequently on the BBC discussing music and history. Leah holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Kerry Andrew is a London-based musician, and author. Their latest book, We Are Together Because: A novel of siblings, sex and the end of the world starts as a sensual summer drama and very quickly becomes about our own survival, asking us what is truly important in life, and how far we’ve strayed from our place in a more fluid, vibrant, natural world.

Kerry’s debut novel, Swansong, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018 and her second Skin in 2021. They made their short story debut on BBC Radio 4 in 2014 with One Swallow and was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award. Kerry is the winner of four British Composer Awards and is best known for their experimental vocal, choral and music-theatre work, often based around themes of community, landscape and myth. They sing with Juice Vocal Ensemble and has released two albums with her band You Are Wolf: Hawk to the Hunting Gone (2014), a collection of avian folk-songs re-interpreted, and Keld (2018), inspired by freshwater folklore.

Tickets £5 (includes a drink)