Oxford Unbound

We did our first Oxford-based Unbound Live this evening. Tremendous fun as always and a lovely audience at The Jam Factory - the old Frank Cooper Marmalade Factory. MC for the evening was the inimitable Mr John Mitchinson seen here in all of his hirsute glory.

Our first reading and book pitch came from Kevin Parr whose darkly comic tale of birdwatchers and murder - The Twitch - is currently 70% funded.

Then came Lisa Gee with her usual spirited sales pitch for Hayleyworld, her biography of a forgotten bad poet and rubbish horseman.

Next up was E O Higgins whose comic mystery novel Conversations with Spirits is currently 48% funded.

And to round off Part One, Katy Brand read us some extracts from her very funny first novel Brenda Monk is Funny. 

Part Two kicked off with Keith Kahn- Harris telling us about his continuing efforts to find big fish in small ponds - The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg.

Then it was yours truly. We were told to keep our pitches to eight minutes. So I wrote a talk all about what you can do in eight minutes. You can read it in my Unbound shed here ... but only if you're pledging on my book!

Penultimately, Robert Llewellyn read us some exclusive extracts from his sequel to News from Gardenia, his utopian sci-fi novel ...

... and George Chopping - performance poet extraordinaire - rounded off a splendid evening with his usual gusto, reading new poems and some from his published collection Smoking with Crohn's.

Wonderful fun!