Nowhere Fancy: An Evening with Fitzcarraldo Editions

About

An evening of writing and conversation exploring queerness and the domestic, inspired by Charleston's legacy of experimental art and ideas.

Four writers. Four acts. Spanning poetry, biography, and fiction, this event showcases some of the most exciting voices in contemporary literature.

With its iconic minimalist design and commitment to translated and risk-taking work, Fitzcarraldo Editions has redefined what an independent press can achieve. From Nobel prize winners to the debut authors, it champions innovative, intellectually ambitious new writing.

Act I: Oluwaseun Olayiwola will transport the audience to a 'Strange Beach', an intimate and erotic, ecological and philosophical collection of poems. This reading reckons with the body as a porous landscape across which existential dramas, filial fractures and sexual reckonings occur.

Act II: Alice Hattrick will give a short lecture on the intersections between queer lives, queer histories and making. Blending biography, memoir and art criticism, Alice's forthcoming 'Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives' explores the ever-shifting tensions between family, labour and gender through the history of embroidery, or 'fancy work'.

Act III: In the middle of the countryside, an estate agent is showing a man around an idyllic house. The realtor speaks not only about the home's many wonderful qualities but about its previous owner, the mystifying Helen, whose presence still seems to suffuse every fixture. But as evening fades into black, he will learn that the asking price may be much higher, and more peculiar, than anticipated. Makenna Goodman will be in conversation about her novel, 'Helen of Nowhere', and all the strange and startling places fiction can take us.

Act IV: We finish at the Café. A place where we can eat and refuse work. Where we can meet friends, and not think about love. Where we can meet lovers and be too nervous to eat. Holly Pester will read from her forthcoming collection, 'Cafés', a stylish and political intervention and call for the necessity of a place for eccentrics, poets, employees, and those taking steps towards the rest of their life.

Tamara Sampey-Jawad, Fitzcarraldo's Associate Publisher, will be compere on the night