The Firestation

The Firestation Book Swap
Thursday 21st January. 7.45pm

£5 (GA)

A literary event with a difference.

Novelist Marie Phillips, author of Gods Behaving Badly and publisher Scott Pack host an evening of conversation and banter with a cracking line-up of guest writers.

Don't expect the polite, reserved atmosphere you would normally find at a literary gathering – The Book Swap is irreverent, entertaining and slightly chaotic. You won’t hear boring speeches, the same old questions or authors reading from their latest book - but you could witness almost anything else.

Guest authors this month are Matt Beaumont and Marcus Chown.

Matt Beaumont is the bestselling author of a number of novels including E and its follow-up E Squared, both of which are told entirely through emails, texts and instant messages. Heat magazine called E Squared a 'brilliantly crafted comic novel'. He is a bit of a muso so we hope to get some music recommendations out of him on the night.

Marcus Chown is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster and is currently the cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine. His books include We Need to Talk About Kelvin, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and The Universe Next Door. He has promised not to make us feel stupid and will do his best to explain some of the universe's great mysteries for us on the night.

Audience members are required to bring an unwanted book along with them which they will have an opportunity to swap for a different on one on the night. No one leaves empty handed.

"Certainly a literary event with a difference... I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Book Swap evening doesn't become the popular way to mix books, writers and the reading public." - Robert McCrum, Guardian

"This is exactly the kind of blog-linked, local event that publishers should be really encouraging, a sort of odd cross between a public reading and a book group." - Emma Townshend, Independent

Don’t forget to bring a book!

Approximate show times 2 x 45 mins with interval.