Fresh this Week:
Penned in the Margins presents a diverse line-up tonight, featuring poet and and former snooker pro Jane Holland, Stuart Taylor, Amy Prior and Joe Dunthorne. Free at 7pm, The Whitechapel Gallery, 80-82 Whitechapel Road, E17QX.
Givin’ ‘em away:
To celebrate the shortlist for the 26th Mind Book of the Year Award, which celebrates writing that contributes to public understanding of mental health issues, judge Michele Roberts will attend a preview featuring the seven shortlisted books next Wednesday. Michele Hanson (Living with Mother), Ruth McKernan (Billy’s Halo), Mary Loudon (Relative Stranger: A Life After Death), Elaine Bass (A Secret Madness: The Story of a Marriage) and Angela Patmore (The Truth About Stress) will all be reading. 6.30pm, 9 May, The Gallery at Foyles, 113 – 119 Charing Cross Road, WC2H0EB. Tickets are free but please email [email protected] or telephone 020 8215 2311 to reserve.
Try a Bit of This:
Outside, the mid-morning sun is now very bright, and, though the blinds are still drawn, I can see my parents’ clothes clearly now. Papa’s light-brown jeans are covered with dark stains. Maman is very dirty, her dress covered with dust and dirt, as if she’d been wrestling on the ground all night. She smells of sweat. I knew that it was a bad idea for her to go out last night; she never goes out at night. She tells me that there are many bad women who do, because Rwanda is getting poorer and poorer.
“Maman, Maman!” Jean shrieks suddenly. He must be having a nightmare. She shakes her head guiltily but doesn’t go to him, as if she’d lost her right to be our mother.
From My Parent's Bedroom by Uwem Akpan (read the full text
here), who this week has been nominated for the eighth Caine Prize for African Writing.
Two for a Pound:
2. The letters of George Eliot, author of Middlemarch, go online.
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