Tuesday the 28th of March, 2023, 7pm, Live and on Zoom
For our March event, we’ll be looking at “Young Adult” fiction, and welcoming three very good friends to discuss this particular genre.
Sometimes it’s good to look at one kind of genre to understand the why, how, and who of literature. This month we have three Salon stalwarts – present and past – to ask the question, “What is YA?” Thanks to live streaming, we are able to bring along, through zoom, two ‘old’ friends to join another current ‘regular’ to hold a hybrid debate, with (hopefully) some questions from the floor and online.
The first guest to mention is Philip Caveney, a writer for both adults and children. Since his first novel, The Sins Of Rachel Ellis, published in 1977, he’s produced many works of fiction. His children’s series, Sebastian Darke, has been published in twenty countries around the world and translated into seventeen languages. In 2016, The Piper (written as Danny Weston) won the Scottish Children’s Book Award, while in 2018 The Haunting of Jessop Rise was shortlisted for the Scottish Teenage Book Prize and also nominated
for the Carnegie Medal. Philip has contributed both to our first and forthcoming Salon Anthology.
Second, we have a former regular attendee, Keith Gray. Keith grew up in Grimsby, and his debut novel Creepers, published when he was only 24, was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. His bestselling novel Ostrich Boys was shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Costa Children’s Book Award, and won the Royal Mail Children’s Book Award. It has also been adapted for the stage. While living in Edinburgh in the 2000s Keith was a regular book reviewer for both the Guardian and the Scotsman and was Scottish Book Trust’s first-ever Virtual Writer in Residence. In 2017 Keith moved to live in Vienna and co-founded the not-for-profit writer development community Kulturverein: Sunday Writers’ Club.
To chair this debate/discussion/chit-chat will be another good friend and former Salon regular, Eleanor Pender. Eleanor was formerly part of the staff of the City of Literature (who used to put on the Literary Salon) before going to work at the Traverse Theatre. Despite having moved to the South West of England, she is a regular visitor to her old home, particularly when there’s a Literary Festival to attend. As a writer of YA herself, Eleanor will tease some great responses from our Guests.
We open as usual with a drink reception, but please note that doors to the Function Room at the Outhouse now open at 6.30, to give us time to get our ‘tech’ into place. We will livestream the ‘presentation’ on Zoom from 7pm and send out the zoom invitation to all ticket-holders at 6.30 on the night.
How it works...
6.30: Doors Open – Upstairs Function Room
7.00: Open the Zoom meeting (nb: Zoom details are emailed at 6.30!)
7.10: Introduce the evening's theme and guests
7.20: Discussion: What is YA?
7.50: Notes of Interest, Live Mingling, and Zoom chat
Tickets are available from Eventbrite – we will send a zoom invitation to all attendees anyway.
All Salon Events are free. We invite donations for the glass of wine, or encourage people to buy us a coffee to help fund our work. And our first anthology is still on sale here.
We look forward to seeing you in person or in the zoom-room!
*We acknowledge that some people prefer to attend the Zoom without video, so we invite people to use the ‘comments’ section to give input, paste relevant links, and ask questions. We encourage Salon attendees to say ‘bye’ if they so wish when departing! We will save any links from the comments to share to our mailing-list and social media, and we will not be recording the zoom.