Join us for an evening with authors Rachel Seiffert and Joe Dunthorne, as we celebrate their new books, Once The Deed is Done and Children of Radium.

Children of Radium – Joe Dunthorne’s great-grandfather was a family legend: the eccentric pre-war inventor of radioactive toothpaste and the Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home. Joe always knew he would write a book about this one day. The only problem was that the old man had already written the book of his life – an unpublished memoir so dense and rambling that none of his living descendants had attempted to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally cracked open the manuscript, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew…

Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. He is the author of three novels and one collection of poetry, including Submarine, which has been translated into fifteen languages and made into an acclaimed film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon, which won the 2012 Encore Award. Children of Radium is his first work of non-fiction. He lives in London.

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Once The Deed Is Done – Rachel Seiffert

To be truly alive means having to make choices. To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love.

Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy hears soldiers and sees strangers – forced labourers – fleeing across the heathland by his small town: shawls and skirts in the snowfall. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands. Peace brings more soldiers – but English this time – and Red Cross staff officers. Ruth, on her first posting from London, is given charge of a refugee camp on the heathland, crowded with former forced labourers. As ever more keep arriving, she hears whispers, rumours of dark secrets about that snowy night. The townspeople close ranks, shutting their mouths and minds to the winter’s events, but the town children are curious about the refugees on their doorstep, and Benno can’t carry his secret alone.

Rachel Seiffert’s first novel, The Dark Room, (2001) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and made into the feature film Lore. She was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, and in 2011 received the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Field Study, her collection of short stories, received an award from PEN International. Her second novel, Afterwards (2007), third novel The Walk Home (2014), and forth novel, A Boy in Winter (2017) were longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her books have been published in eighteen languages.

Join us for an evening of readings and discussion around short stories and novel writing from three exceptional debut authors, Marni Appleton, Rupert Dastur and Celia Silvani. They’ll be sharing their unique perspectives on how they became published, as well as reading and discussing their books. If you are interested in writing there’ll be a chance to ask questions, as well as buy signed dedicated copies of their books.

I Hope You’re Happy – Marni Appleton
Marni’s bittersweet debut collection of short stories focuses on the experiences of millennial women – their obsessions, friendships, betrayals and crushes.

Appleton’s wry observational style is well suited to these tales of young women navigating the modern world. She writes with empathy for her vulnerable protagonists, conveying their inner conflicts and deceptions. – The Guardian

Marni is a writer living in London. She holds a PhD in creative-critical writing from the University of East Anglia. Her writing has been published in literary and academic journals including Banshee, The Tangerine, Contemporary Women’s Writing and Comparative American Studies.

Cloudless – Rupert Dastur

It is Autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, a family endures the agonising wait for their son to come back from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other pressing concerns to be met at home: the working of the farmland that has been theirs for generations, and what to do with their troubled younger son.

Rupert is a writer, editor and publisher. His writing has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and won the Federation of Scottish Writers Award in 2018. He is the founder of TSS Publishing and director of the Cambridge Prizes for short fiction, and runs writing workshops. He read English at Cambridge University and lives in London.

Baby Teeth – Celia Silvani

The emotional, thought-provoking novel about motherhood, secrets and lies. Claire is expecting a baby. It’s her dream but not everyone is as supportive as she’d like. Isolated and vulnerable, she is drawn into an online group for ‘natural motherhood’ and is warmly embraced by the sisterhood. As Claire withdraws further into their world and with her due date fast approaching, she is unsettled by the group’s conformity and the total shunning of medical intervention.
But blind loyalty can be catastrophic – and her silence could be fatal…

Celia is a communications director and freelance writer, who has written for Stylist, The Guardian and BBC Future on topics ranging from weddings to hurricanes. She got the inspiration for BABY TEETH from an NBC article she couldn’t stop thinking about, so interviewed midwives and obstetricians to get a fuller picture of birthing stories – as well as spending a lot of time lurking in the dark corners of the internet.