To celebrate the publication of The Artificial Parisienne I thought I’d invite some fellow francophiles for a French-themed evening! Drop me a line at email hidden; JavaScript is required if you’d like to come along and raise a glass!
Poster designed by Jane Wilkinson
David Barnes has been reading his poems aloud in Paris bars since 2003. The best of them were published last year as Poets Are Liars Who Tell The Truth (corrupt press) after extensive road-testing at the weekly open mic and writers’ community he fathered, Spoken Word Paris. Poems that bite, such as ‘Bitter Valentine’, love poems, fun poems, poems about Paris ‘who dances by numbers but longs to release jazz…’ and poems that dive into dark waters – the ties of love and suffering that bind him to family back in England, where everyone haunted their own lives. Born Reading, 1971.
Edalia Day is a transgender spoken word artist, animator and theatre maker. Collaborators have included the National Theatre, The Young Vic, Harrogate Theatre and Theatre Royal Norwich, and her work has featured at Sundance Film Festival in the US and Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.
She spent two years studying physical theatre at the acclaimed Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and has fond memories of her time there. Currently she’s writing a novel about a trans girl surviving the apocalypse, and two new spoken word shows: Queericles and Let People Like You.
Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the November 2015 terrorist attacks; and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). In 2013/14 he took part in the Jerwood/Arvon mentoring scheme and Aldeburgh Eight, before completing an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) with the Manchester Writing School. In 2018 he co-edited the ‘Europe’ issue of Magma (70). He has spent a lot of time in France, living in Avignon and Montpellier; as a student, and later working in Lille and Paris. His first collection ‘Hard Drive’ was published by Carcanet in June 2023. Website: paulstep.com / Instagram: paulstep456
Jane Wilkinson is a British-Irish writer based in Norwich. Her first collection ‘Eve Said’ (Live Canon 2023) ‘explores multiple facets of womanhood. Corralling experiences of infertility, anxiety, the sea, loss, nature, childbirth, mortality, connectedness, daughterhood, toxic masculinity, and love… at its core… life’s ‘indestructible grace’(Heidi Williamson). She has won and been placed in a number of competitions including 1st place in Live Canon Collection Prize, Aesthetica Poetry Prize and Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize and this year has placed 2nd in Café Writers Prize and 3rd in Troubadour International Poetry Prize. Jane is widely published in magazines including Ink Sweat & Tears, Under the Radar, Magma, Lighthouse Journal, The Alchemy Spoon, Envoi, Finished Creatures and anthologies from Emma Press and Live Canon.
