Next Buzzwords Sunday 7th April

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 7th April

Workshop, led by Chrissie Gittins 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Chrissie Gittins

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

CHRISSIE GITTINS was born in Lancashire and lives in London. Her poems have won prizes and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her first adult poetry collection Armature (Arc, 2003) appeared to critical acclaim: ‘Gittins’s deadpan tone and skewed perspective mark her out as a true original. – she has a genuine gift'. Jane Yeh, Poetry Review. Her second adult collection is I’ll Dress One Night As You (Salt, 2009).‘Her appealing poems reconnect a child’s wide-awake senses with an adult’s intelligence and passion.’ Alison Brackenbury, Poetry Review

Her three children’s poetry collections are all PBS Choices for the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf and two were shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. In 2012 Chrissie made a recording of her children’s poetry for the Poetry Archive. Her ‘New and Collected’ children’s poems ‘Stars in Jars’ will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2014.

Chrissie’s short story collection is Family Connections (Salt, 2007); ‘most of them carry an insidiously discomforting charge’, Nicholas Clee, The Guardian. Her plays for BBCR4 include Starved for Love (starring Patricia Routledge), Life Assurance (starring Sorcha Cusack), and Dinner in the Iguanodon.

Chrissie is a Hawthornden Fellow; she has received two Arts Council Grants for the Arts, and awards from the Royal Literary Fund and the Author’s Foundation. In 2009 she was included in the British Council Contemporary Writers directory of the UK and Commonwealth’s 'most important writers'. Chrissie was resident writer on Shetland in September 2010, and in January 2010 she was appointed first honorary Writer-in-Residence in Lewisham.

www.chrissie.gittins.co.uk