The Blue Room

Who are we?

We meet at 8.00 pm on the first Sunday of the month, upstairs at the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle.

Encouraging new women - and men - writers to read their work, and promoting new audiences for live poetry and prose.

The Bridge Hotel is in Castle Garth, opposite the Castle Keep, on the Newcastle side of the High Level Bridge.

The cost is £4 or £3 for concessions; pay on the door.

Colette Bryce Originally from Derry, Northern Ireland, Colette moved to the North East when she was appointed to the NE Literary Fellowship in 2005. She has published two poetry collections with Picador, The Heel of Bernadette and The Full Indian Rope Trick, and a pamphlet The Observations of Aleksandr Svetlov. Her poems have won both the National and the Cardiff International poetry competitions. A third collection, Self-Portrait in the Dark, is forthcoming in Sept '08.

 

 

Lilian Pizzichini Lilian Pizzichini's first book, Dead Men's Wages (Picador, 2002), won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. Her next book, The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys, will be published by Bloomsbury in Spring 2009. She has worked in bookshops, literary agencies, newspapers and prisons.

 

Irene Garrow was born and grew up in Glasgow. In another life she wrote and produced short documentaries for television then moved on to producing short stories and poems. In the next life she hopes to produce short bread. She is currently the writer in residence in her majesty’s prison in Kent and has just completed a short collection of poems. She’s not very tall.

 

 

James Welsh was brought up and educated in Glasgow but has spent most of his life living and working in and around Tyneside. He has been writing for about ten years and in that time has had several short stories published in various magazines including Billy Liar, Text, Bare Bones and Sand 2. He has tried his hand at most forms of writing including poetry, drama (screenplay and stageplay), and prose. For the last eighteen months or so he has been concentrating on his first novel, which was recently sent to a literary agent.. He has read his work at various venues on Tyneside including the Morden Tower, The Blue Room, Caedmon Hall and the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. At the moment he is involved in a project for local radio.

Music from Ray Wright to start the evening and Andy, Jon and Tom to close the night.

Ray Wright was born and raised in Hartlepool and is currently studying Fine Art at Northumbria University. He has been playing his captivating blend of acoustic music around Newcastle for just a few months, and has already established himself as a local talent. He takes his influence from everything around him, as well as his eclectic taste in music, ranging from Delta Blues and Folk, to Hip-Hop and beyond

 

 

Andy Cutts, Jon Evans and Tom Robertshaw are three students from the north-east and they're really in to their music. They take influence from Society, People and Culture (as well as artists such as Bob Dylan, The Smiths, Robert Johnson and the Libertines ). As well as running one themselves, they have been playing at acoustic nights around Newcastle since September. Their sound is a unique blend of Folk, Indie and Blues.