October 2006
Thanks to a new grant from The Arts Council of England ( North East) the Blue Room kicked off a new series of events on Sunday October 1st at 8pm in the Bridge Hotel, Castle Garth, Newcastle.
We were proud to present the ever brilliant: Ellen Phethean, Carol McGuigan, Alison Gangel and Christy Ducker with music by the supremely talented Bex Mather!
Award winning ALISON GANGEL is originally from Glasgow. She is the single parent of a ten-year-old and teaches English in a secondary school in Newcastle. She is writing a ‘powerful and utterly distinctive' autobiographical novel entitled - Give That Girl A Spotlight.
ELLEN PHETHEAN is a sound artist, poet, playwright and editor.Her poetry is in Sauce (Bloodaxe Books) and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She co-founded Diamond Twig Press with Julia Darling.She has written plays for Radio, Northumbria University, Live Theatre's Youth Group and Schools. In 2003/4 she was writer in residence with 7 Stories and wrote Wall, a teen novel in poems, to be published by Smokestack Books, and she's currently working on the next novel in similar style.She teaches Writing for Children at Centre for Lifelong Learning in Newcastle.
CAROL McGUIGAN has had seven plays broadcast on BBC Radio and five produced on stage. In the last three years, she has been developing as a prose writer. She has short stories in Tyneside Tales,, an Endpapers anthology and in the second Phantoms at the Phil anthology published by Side Real Press this year. Her novel in progress ‘How the Eye Works' won her a New Writing North Northern Promise Award in April. She will read a short extract tonight.
CHRISTY DUCKER is an editor, reviewer and poet. She has also taught creative writing since 1999. Publications include Acknowledged Land, Diamond Twig, Mslexia, Orbis, The Reader, Smoke and The Wolf. She is currently working towards a first collection. She lives and works in Northumberland.
BEX MATHER is a singer songwriter based in the N.E. Over the last year bex has been writing new material, performed with Nitin Sawhney and the Aftershock project and been part of a PRS project working with 5 UK singer songwriters and 5 Danish Singer Songwriters to create new work and performance. Bex has been recording her second collaborative album ‘Lowland', and has support to create an E.P. and compilation album on a new label this autumn. Bex sings in a 4 piece a cappella ensemble ‘Mouthful', creates and composes on various projects through commissions and is a theatre maker. Recent review of London gig…‘extraordinary talent of ebola-levels of infectiousness.'
