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Cardiff BookTalk
@cardiffbooktalk.bsky.social
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Cardiff BookTalk is a university book group with a difference. Organized by the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University.

https://cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/
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Fall River is a disquieting mixture of crime fiction with magical realism on the river Tamar in Cornwall and we're thrilled to be discussing it with Meredith Miller at Cardiff Uni's Spark Building on 19 March.

Book your free ticket here: www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/car...
March 5, 2024 at 9:58 AM
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‘Not From an Astronomer’ is about the eighteenth century astronomer Caroline Herschel. Working at a time when women were excluded from scientific discourse, she discovered several comets and was the first woman to publish in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
March 5, 2024 at 9:49 AM
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On the blog right now we're looking at a short story by Meredith Miller, who will BookTalking with us on 19 March.

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2024/02/27/t...
March 5, 2024 at 9:47 AM
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The next BookTalk is on the blog now!

Britain’s Internal Borderlands – Meredith Miller in conversation with Kevin Morgan

More info and booking: cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/b...
February 7, 2024 at 2:21 PM
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Catch up with Monday's BookTalk online!

Watch Writing the City with Rachel Dawson and Emma Harding via today's blog

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Authors Emma Harding and Rachel Dawson discuss their work at Cardiff University's Special Collections and Archives
December 7, 2023 at 3:45 PM
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Both novels, Rachel Dawson's Neon Roses and Emma Hardings The Berliners are available now from all good bookshops

We will be back for more BookTalking in 2024!
December 5, 2023 at 1:39 PM
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Thanks everyone who came last night to Cardiff University Special Collections for Writing the City with Emma Harding and Rachel Dawson.

Special thanks to Literature Wales for their support

It’s always amazing to see so many people in the audience engaged with our guests and asking questions
December 5, 2023 at 1:38 PM
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Rachel will be joined by fellow-novelist Emma Harding (The Berliners) next Monday evening for Writing the City

This event at Cardiff University Special Collections is totally free and open to all and supported by Literature Wales

More info: cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/10/10/w...
November 30, 2023 at 3:09 PM
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Todays blog: Rachel Dawson, author of Neon Roses, interviewed for Nation Cymru

‘When I write about the liberatory power of finding your community, I’ve been writing for my friends’

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/11/30/w...
November 30, 2023 at 3:06 PM
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Emma Harding will be joined by Rachel Dawson for our event Writing the City at Cardiff University Special Collections on 4 December

More info and tix: cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/10/10/w...
November 29, 2023 at 3:14 PM
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Today's blog: ‘Cappuccino for Salerio!’

Emma Harding talks about adapting Shakespeare for radio in this interview with Ronan Hatfull

There's less than a week until Emma joins us for Writing the City...

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/11/29/c...
‘Cappuccino for Salerio!’ – Emma Harding on adapting Shakespeare for radio Picture shows author portrait of Emma Harding and a cartoon of Yorick (I knew him Horatio!) listening to a quality BBC radio drama on his headphones Text reads: Emma Harding, author of The Berliners will be joining us at Special Collections and Archives next Monday for Writing the City with fellow-novelist Rachel Dawson. As well as writing her own fiction, Emma has a long career writing and directing for the radio, with a particular focus on adapting classic texts for a radio audience. In this in-depth 2021 interview with Ronan Hatfull, Emma talks about the process of adapting Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for BBC Radio 3’s Drama on 3 series. She reveals herself to be a shrewd and articulate operator and we’re looking forward to hearing her thoughts on the topic of Writing the City next week. Text reads: ‘We recorded the whole scene on the move in the studio. Normally, we use static mics and the actors move in relation to the mics. There’s a lot more movement in radio productions than people think, as we use the whole studio space to create a sense of place and perspective, but with this scene, I really wanted everybody to be on the move. So, I had my studio manager with a handheld mic on a boom, and we choreographed it so that actors kept walking around the entire studio space in a circle and just kept talking as they moved.' Text reads: 'I wanted the sense of early morning, the city people starting work, coffee in hand, coming out into the street, going into the office building – we go into the lift and hear the lift ascending. Then, they meet more people in the office, there are televisions and telephones, and all the noise of a city office. It was partly to create a sense of the busy world of these traders with their ambitions and their kinetic energy. And of course, in contrast, you’ve got Antonio in a slightly different psychic space at this point in the play. I wanted to bring out that generational difference between him and these younger traders.’
November 29, 2023 at 3:07 PM
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Today's blog: ‘…hammer blows delivered by an affable feather-light touch’

In which a Rachel Trezise review of Neon Roses via Nation Cymru gives us an unexpected excuse to completely stan Grace Jones

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Grace Jones looking fierce on the cover of Slave to the Rhythym. A collage effect makes her mouth and hair look big The cover of Rachel Dawson's Neon Roses, showing a pop art style rose adorned with 1980s LGBTQ+ badges
November 14, 2023 at 1:39 PM
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Joseph gives us a first hand account of how he documented the struggles of indignous activists against illegal loggers and the ecological destruction caused by mining companies, while Annie shares her thoughts on the challenges of recreating the poetry and precison of Joseph’s prose in English.
November 9, 2023 at 11:58 AM
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Watch the video of last week's BookTalk about Joseph Zárate's Wars of the Interior on our blog.

Joseph Zárate was joined by his translator Annie McDermott and the conversation was guided by novelist Richard Gwyn.

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November 9, 2023 at 11:56 AM
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...divorcees, housewives and terrorists, The Daily Telegraph called it ‘an ingenious and ambitious debut, formally inventive, rich with character and incident’. Based in Cardiff, Harding also works as a writer and director for BBC Radio Drama
Portrait of author Emma Harding
November 7, 2023 at 11:01 AM
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Emma Harding’s The Berliners is a complex, polyphonic novel about the interweaving histories of the inhabitants of an apartment building in Berlin, from the early 1900s to the present day. With a cast of voices including cabaret artists, occult investigators, reluctant pornographers...
The Berliners shows a woman with a pensive expression gazing at you though cross-hatched layers of darkness and colour
November 7, 2023 at 10:57 AM
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Rachel Trezise describes Neon Roses as ‘a sexy, earthy and unashamedly bubbly debut that celebrates its sexuality and refuses to dull its Welshness or deny its social class’. Living in Cardiff, Dawson is a working class Lesbian writer from the Welsh Valleys.
Portrait of novelist Rachel Dawson offering a wry and slightly cheeky smile
November 7, 2023 at 10:54 AM
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Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson is a Queer coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of eighties Britain. Her protagonist, Eluned, experiences a sexual awakening when the fundraising group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners comes from London to her Valleys town to support the strike.
The cover of Neon Roses shows a rose drawn in a pop art style covered by badges proclaiming radical slogans such as 'Yes, I'm a homosexual too' and 'radical fairy'.
November 7, 2023 at 10:53 AM
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Join us on Monday 4 Dec for Writing the City with novelists Emma Harding and Rachel Dawson. We're meeting at Special Collections and Archives in Cardiff University's Arts and Social Studies Library to discuss their books The Berliners and Neon Roses.

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/10/10/w...
Image shows the book covers for Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson and The Berliners by Emma Harding. For Neon Roses a rose drawn in a pop art style is covered by badges proclaiming radical slogans such as 'out of the closet and into the street' and 'think straight - be gay'. The Berliners shows a woman with a pensive expression gazing at you though cross-hatched layers of darkness and colour
November 7, 2023 at 10:48 AM
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TONIGHT

Joseph Zárate and Annie McDermott in conversation with Richard Gwyn

See you at 7pm!

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/10/12/w...
November 1, 2023 at 9:38 AM
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Joseph Zárate is discussing Wars of the Interior with his translator Annie McDermott and novelist Richard Gwyn at our next meeting of BookTalk on 1st November.

Book your place on this online event via TicketSource: www.ticketsource.co.uk/null/t-noydgdl
October 25, 2023 at 1:20 PM
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Day 2 on BlueSky and we’ve already passed the psychologically important Doctor Who content in the timeline mark.

Good work everybody x
October 13, 2023 at 7:54 AM
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Today's blog on Joseph Zárate’s Wars of the Interior:

‘This work is an achingly timely clarion call. Wars of the Interior depicts with stark vividness the devastation of the Amazon... equally moving and incisive.'

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/10/12/w...
October 12, 2023 at 2:40 PM
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📢ANNOUNCEMENT📢

Autumn BookTalks for your diary

We're online with Joseph Zárate for his book Wars of the Interior

In December Emma Harding and Rachel Dawson are in conversation about their novels The Berliners and Neon Roses

Booking info TBC

cardiffbooktalk.wordpress.com/2023/10/12/c...
October 12, 2023 at 2:08 PM
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Recently we've done talks on Carmen Maria Machado, Watership Down, A Clockwork Orange, The Waste Land and Kazuo Ishiguro

We've also spoken to authors including Tessa Hadley, Sophie Buchaillard and Eric Ngalle Charles at in person events around Cardiff
Watership Down by Richard Adams
October 12, 2023 at 1:01 PM