LGBT+ Arts Night Part One: Meet the Academics, Poets and Misc. Speakers!

Hey you guys! It’s really happening! The LGBT+ Society in the University of Surrey, in partnership with Appleseed Bookshop (the greatest bookshop in the world!), are holding a night of poetry, music, art, literature and academic talks.

And I’m working at the event.

AND I’M HELPING TO ORGANISE IT!

PLUS I’M DOING A POETRY READING!

I don’t know what the point of working in PR was because I am terrible at promoting things, you guys. I’ve been walking around campus and town like, “Take my flyers. TAKE THEM!” But none of the local galleries or theatres seem to want to advertise our totally awesome amazing super cool event. Their loss.

But I know I can count on you, internet! You have never let me down. (Except for that one time when you couldn’t find me any cute pictures of baby greyhounds, that was a sad day.)

If you can’t see the image at the top of the page, the event is taking place on 4 December at Appleseed Bookshop in the University of Surrey (which is in England). Here is the Facebook page for the event. It’s free entry, but we are taking donations if you feel particularly prosperous on the evening because we have little to no budget and it’s actually effing expensive to organise a night like this and transport art. Who knew?

The first half of the night will feature talks from our guest speakers.

English Department’s Churnjeet Mahn will be delivering a talk titled ‘Lesbians: Commodity and Censorship’. Churnjeet is my favourite lecturer ever (sorry other lecturers) and I think this is going to be really interesting. She’ll be looking at a few ways the word “lesbian” is used in contemporary cultures.

Psychology Department’s Peter Hegarty‘s talk is called ‘A Rebel’s Butterfly: Rebecca Solnit’s observations on the Natural History Museum in Dublin’. It’ll be around California travel writer Rebecca Solnit’s observations about Roger Casement, the Natural History Museum in Dublin (from her travel book about Ireland, A Book of Migrations).

Michael Bedo is a PhD student at the university and he’s going to do an exploration of gay men’s experience in the Victorian era and how this relates to literature which came out of that period.

The second half of the night is going to be a bunch of performances and readings by really cool people.

Molli (with an i)

Cheryl Moore is the creator of mythological Unbound Boxes Limping Gods, from which she will be reading. Her characters, though flawed, are complex and beautifully drawn (figuratively and literally) and her storylines are so well-planned and intricate, she’s definitely a star waiting to be discovered.

Her style is experimental — on one’s initial visit to her website it can be difficult to navigate the story lines. But after a little bit of exploring, it’s clear that Cheryl writes sci-fi micro-stories remarkably well. We’re so glad/honoured that she’s happy to be involved in our little night and she is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met!

Unbound Boxes Limping Gods is the first in a series of speculative fiction manuscripts for which Cheryl is seeking publication. I can totally picture her books next to Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels or something. Here is a really awesome review of her work.

Stephanie Davies will also be reading but oh wait that’s me. I think I will be reading from my already existing stuff, but I might write something special for the night. My poetry is twelve kinds of mediocre but you should totally stay for the rest of the performers!

Because…

Next up is a reading by Stephen Mooney. Stephen is the University of Surrey’s poet in residence .

This is not Stephen Mooney.

Stephen is a Real Poet and is thus very good at what he does. I suggest you just come witness it yourself in person. (I’ve seen what he’s going to be reading and it is pretty mind-blowing you guys.)

Chloe Mercer is going to be doing an acoustic performance I think. I don’t know much about her but a little Facebook stalking shows me that she likes to dress up. Maybe you can look forward to that!!

XXStein aka the artist formerly known as Tommy Monroe of the Charming Thieves aka my super hot, super talented partner will be closing the night for us with a little musical performance. Frankie is a music and conceptual artist exploring gender, counter culture, punk rock and the radical left.

(c) Claudia Moroni

Stay tuned for Part Two when I’ll introduce you to the visual artists who’ll also be involved in the night!

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