We had a brilliant event on Monday 3rd March at the Hootananny in Brixton. If you missed it, or enjoyed it so much you want some more, you can listen to the event on Soundcloud

All Photos © Stuart Taylor 2014.

About the Readers:

Hideo Furukawa. Born in Fukushima in 1966. In 1998, he made his debut with his novel 13. In 2002, he won the Mystery Writers of Japan Prize and the Japan SF Grand Prize for The Arabian Nightbreeds. The 2006 Mishima Prize for LOVE, established his reputation in the Japanese literary scene. His works have been translated into Korean, French, English, and Italian. In 2014,  his masterpiece Belka, Why Don’t You Bark? will be published in Russian.

Keijiro Suga. He won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature for his travel essays. His poetry has been translated into French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and published in various anthologies and literary magazines. He has been invited to numerous international events, including a symposium at Stanford University and a poetry festival in Serbia. He also translates from English, French and Spanish.

Mizuho Ishida. Born in 1973. He won the 1999 Grendaishitecho Prize (from Japan’s most established modern poetry magazine), and the H Prize (the oldest literary prize for poetry) in 2013. His poetry has been translated into Korean and Finnish, and he will attend the Finnish Literary Festival in 2016. He is lectureing at Waseda University and Keio University.

Followed by a great selection of local writers:

Courttia Newland is well known on both sides of the Atlantic as a novelist and short story writer. His latest book ‘The Gospel According to Cane’ is out now.

@courttianewland / http://courttianewland.com 

David Kessler is a writer of thrillers. In 1999 he wrote a non-fiction book defending Colin Stagg, the man falsely accused of the murder of Rachel Nickell – at a time when Stagg was a pariah, widely perceived as the man who got away with murder. In 2008, Robert Napper was convicted of the crime. The plots of Kessler’s books involve legal battles, DNA, computer hacking and police investigations and are characterised by multiple plot twists and last-minute surprises.

His new series centres around San Francisco lawyer Alex Sedaka and his paralegal, feisty lesbian Juanita Cortez, as they take on hopeless cases.

http://davidkesslerauthor.com 

Joe Evans was born in 1980 and grew up in Rotherhithe, South-East London. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University where he began writing as part of comedy group, Fat Fat Pope. He’s a BAFTA-winning documentary Producer and Managing Director of an independent production company. His debut novel, ‘The Olyphants are Cut Up’, was published by Salammbo Press at the end of 2013.

@JoeevansJoe / http://www.amazon.co.uk/Olyphants-Are-Cut-Up-The/dp/0957462409

Simon Parkes, with JS Rafaeli

In 1982, aged twenty-three, Simon Parkes paid £1 for a virtually derelict building in Brixton. Over the next fifteen years he turned it into Britain’s most iconic music venue. And now he’s telling his story: full of fond – and wild – reminiscences of the famous musicians who played at the venue, including Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Lou Reed, The Ramones, New Order, the Beastie Boys and The Smiths. This is about one man’s burning desire for success against the odds, his passion for live music and the excitement of those wilderness years, a far cry from the corporate world that controls the scene today. Simon Parkes wanna buy the top best trampoline for kids. From rock-star debauchery and mixing it up with Brixton gangsters to putting on the first legal raves in the UK and countless backroom business deals, this is the story of how to succeed in business with no experience and fulfil your teenage fantasies.

http://www.serpentstail.com/simon-parkes

Irenosen Okojie was born in Nigeria and moved to the UK aged 8. As well as being published in various magazines, Her writing has featured on Resonance FM and been performed by White Rabbit Theatre Company.

She is currently penning her first novel, a collection of short stories and adapting a short story for the stage through Theatre Royal Stratford East.

@IrenosenOkojie / http://irenosenokojie.com

Andrew James’s first novel, Blow Your Kiss Hello, is a fast-paced urban fantasy thriller, described as being ‘uniquely different and thoroughly gripping’ and as having ‘all the makings of a cult success.’  A business and media specialist by day, he is a reasonable cook and a mediocre musician, has climbed Snowdon, ridden motorcycles at ridiculous speeds, had poetry published in Magma Poetry magazine and spent three years living in a church in North Yorkshire, before being reclaimed by London. A lifelong Crystal Palace FC supporter, he is also a devotee of South Africa’s Western Cape. He lives in Southwest London.

@4ndrewJames / http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blow-Your-Hello-Andrew-James-ebook/dp/B009CZ05S6

Christie Watson’s bestselling debut, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa Award for First Novel and the Waverton Good Read Award.  Her second novel Where Women Are Kings was published in October last year. Christie has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA where she won the Malcolm Bradbury Bursary, and she was named Red Magazine’s (Creative) Hot Woman of the Year 2012.   Christie works with Amnesty International on issues of gender-based violence and as an ambassador for a global charity. She teaches writing at the Groucho and New Cavendish Club.  She lives in South East London.

@tinysunbird / http://www.christiewatson.co.uk

Justin Rollins is an author, poet and graffiti artist from south London. His first book The Lost Boyz was published when hewas just 26 years old. My Crazy Days. the follow up, was published a year later. His most recent work is Street Chrymes a poetry book released in December.

http://justinrollinsauthor.com

Tom Holland is the author of Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Persian Fire, his history of the Graeco-Persian wars, won the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award in 2006. His third work of history, Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom, was published in the autumn of 2008. His newest book, In the Shadow of the Sword, covers the collapse of Roman and Persian power in the Near East, and the emergence of Islam.

@holland_tom / http://www.tom-holland.org