July 2005
Guests at July's Blue Room, on Sunday 3rd July, were poets Chrissie Gittins and Joan Johnston, and two prose writers from the Tindall Street Press, Myra Connell and Mandy Sutter; plus music from Matt and Shani Cadwallender.
Chrissie Gittins was born in Lancashire and studied at Newcastle University and St Martin's School of Art. She worked as an artist and a teacher before becoming a full-time freelance writer. She writes poetry, radio drama and short stories for adults, and poetry for children. She was awarded a fellowship at Hawthornden Castle in 2001 and has received awards from the Society of Authors and the Royal Literary Fund. Chrissie was awarded an Arts Council Grant for the Arts in 2005 to complete her collection of short stories.
Her collections include Armature (from Arc Publications) and Now You See Me, Now You... (Rabbit Hole Publications).
She lives in Forest Hill in South London and travelled up from London especially for this occasion, her first time at the Blue Room.
Joan Johnston was born in Newcastle, and has lived on Tyneside all her life apart from a one-year stint working in Italy. Her first collection was What You Want, from Diamond Twig. In 2000, she was awarded a Hawthornden Writing Fellowship. Now she has a new collection, Orange for the Sun, from Dogeater Press.
Tindal Street Press was "catapulted to sudden fame" in autumn 2003 by the Man Booker Prize shortlisting of Clare Morrall's "heartbreaking and accomplished"' debut Astonishing Splashes of Colour. An independent publisher of strong contemporary fiction, their varied list features talented new writers from the English regions.
Myra Connell grew up in Northern Ireland and now works in Birmingham as an acupuncturist and Zero Balancer. She was a founder member of the writers' group Women & Words, and of Bleak House Books. Her "mesmerisingly peculiar" stories and poems have been published in Spinster, Writing Women and Her Majesty.
Mandy Sutter is a poet and short story writer; her poetry collections Permission to Stare and Game were published in the 1990s. Her forthcoming novel The Habit of Loneliness is set in Leeds, Scarborough and Nigeria, where she grew up in the 1960s during the days of oil exploration.
Brother and sister, Matt and Shani Cadwallender are talented young musicians from Wearside. The combination of Matt's guitar and Shani's vocals gave us a rare treat.
