This event has been postponed. Ticket holders have been contacted, and we hope to have an updated date to share with you soon.
That’s What She* Said is BACK! After the raucous success of our tenth birthday party last summer and our Queer Heartbreakers Ball earlier this year, we returning for another online extravaganza in true For Books’ Sake style… by celebrating summer, Pride season, our eleventh birthday and the time of year we’d usually be at Edinburgh Fringe, all smashed together into one incredible evening of poetry and performance.
You’re all invited to come along and revel in the glorious quadruple-threat of spoken word superstars Brown Girl in the Ring, AJ McKenna, Fay Roberts and Rosie Garland. Missed sharing your work from our stages? We have some open mic slots available for you to show off your skillz: express your interest by filling out this form.
You’ll be hosted by our double act dream team of That’s What She* Said Bristol host Bridget Hart and London host Paul Forster, bringing you their signature pop-culture silliness between performances plus other special guests and surprises.
Break out the rainbow glitter and flags, don your summer frocks, short shorts or swimwear, set up your phone so we can serenade you in your paddling pool, and fill your freezers with all the ice-cream and cool confections you’ll need to keep you chill when we turn up the heat with this amazing line-up.
Having sold-out almost all our Edinburgh Fringe shows in 2017, 2018 and 2019 (in 2017 we were so packed that attendees literally ripped the door off its hinges to get into our final show of the series!), we honestly can’t wait to get the gang together again online and celebrate our brilliant community.
As with our Heartbreakers Ball, we’ll also be using the event as an opportunity to raise raise some much-needed funds to see us through the next few months. But whether or not you’re in a position to donate, we’d love to have you attend.
Real talk time: our live events are the only part of For Books’ Sake that make any money. With our workshops and retreats, we cover our costs and pay our facilitators, but next-to-nothing goes back into the kitty. Maybe not the best of business plans, but we got into this to build and support a community, not become millionaires.
Our monthly live events in London, Manchester and Bristol have always functioned as fundraisers that make the rest of what we do possible. We don’t get any external funding from anywhere else. So going almost eighteen months without those live events has had a massive impact, and we’re struggling.
If you want to show us some love this summer, there’s an option to make an additional donation when you buy your ticket. Everything penny you donate will go towards ensuring our survival, and you’ll get our eternal love and gratitude too.
We also know the unprecedented surrealness of the ongoing pandemic has hit some of you hard, so we’ve set aside a number of free tickets for those of you who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend. If you want one of these, please just email us.
Performer
Rosie Garland
Rosie Garland writes long and short fiction, poetry and sings with post-punk band The March Violets. Her new poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ (Nine Arches Press) has just been nominated for the Polari Prize. Latest novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter.” In 2019, Val McDermid named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT+ writers. She has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries, and a firm belief in the power of persistence.
Performer
Fay Roberts
Fay Roberts is a performance poet, a musician, an events host, an accidental voice actor, Artistic Director for Spoken Word at PBH’s Free Fringe, and an enormous geek. During weekdays, ze persuades people to make lists and say no to shiny things. For every role, there is a spreadsheet.
Performer
AJ McKenna
AJ McKenna has performed poems while stripping, handcuffing herself to a microphone stand and having dry rice thrown at her in an attempt to understand the true meaning of love, though not, as yet, all at the same time. She is the author of A Lady of a Certain Rage, names and songs of women, Incidents of Trespass and, most recently, England is the Enemy. In her spare time she worries.
Performer
Brwn Girl in the Ring
Brwn Girl in the Ring is a facilitator and storyteller through poetry, spoken word and fiction writing, based in the West Midlands. UK-born, she identifies as a Malawian Indian Muslim woman and her love for playful wordplay includes themes of pleasure, survival, nature, anti-colonial healing, identity, spirituality and music. When you read her work, her hope is you are transported to a place of magical, hopeful, loving, honest and ultimately healing stories that don’t shy from reality.
Host
Paul Forster
Paul Forster has been been co-director and events manger for FBS since 2015. Curating and hosting London’s chapter of That’s What We Said, as well organising for larger events at Edinburgh Fringe and the Royal Albert Hall. Paul is now working on other projects including his first full novel and a supporting consultant for the new chapter of For Books’ Sake.
Host
Bridget Hart
Bridget Hart (they/them) is a writer, performer and creative producer based in the South West.
Bridget is the former long term editor of Burning Eye Books, and continues to help performance artists transfer their work to the page as a freelance mentor. They have appeared on panels and hosted live poetry events across many UK festivals including Verve, Leeds, Cheltenham Poetry Festivals, Shambala, Uni Slam and the Poetry Book Fair.
As a performance poet, Bridget has been tearing up DIY punk shows for over a decade, cutting their teeth at feminist punk shows across the country. They have performed at Boomtown, Shambala, Manchester Punk Festival and Edinburgh Fringe. They have published two collections of poetry, Better Watch Your Mouth, and the latest Chewing Gum – a queer reimagining of Grease published by Small Press (Tangent Books).
Bridget is the co-ordinator of For Books’ Sake’s non-binary writer’s group They//Us.
