Lucifer Over London book launch

Join us for an evening of readings to celebrate the launch of Lucifer Over London.

The event will start at 18:00 with a chance to view the Swirl of Words / Swirl of Worlds exhibition at PEER and Shoreditch Library, refreshments will be provided. The readings will take place outside the front of PEER starting at 18:30 with an introduction from the gallery and Influx Press, this will be followed by readings from Vanni Bianconi, Saleh Addonia, Zinovy Zinik, Chloe Aridjis, Xiaolu Guo and Viola di Grado. Readings will finish around 19:30 with a further half hour for discussion, further exhibition viewing and drinks.

About Lucifer Over London

London does not exist; London is a language without a place and it is the aphasic city; it’s the mother of all languages. Lucifer Over London is a new anthology, nine narrative essays written by a host of international prize-winning authors including Chloe Aridjis, Viola di Grado, Xiaolu Guo, Joanna Walsh and Zinovy Zinik. This is a version of London as seen from the immigrants of recent migrations, of deportations to come, from those who create London even as they contradict it.

About Swirl of Words / Swirl of Worlds

This event is part of Swirl of Words / Swirl of Worlds , a multi-platform and multi-media arts programme celebrating Hackney’s ethnic diversity and exploring how language shapes and informs cultural and individual identities. Over the summer, Hoxton Street neighbours PEER and Shoreditch Library will be the two main venues for a project that intersects visual arts with the written, spoken and printed word. The project has three main project strands:

A poetry publication consisting of over 100 poems, one to represent each language spoken in Hackney. The poems appear in their original language and their English translation. 3,000 copies of this book are now available for free to Hackney Library Members.

A multi-media group exhibition at both PEER and Shoreditch Library exploring themes of cultural identity, endangered and lost languages, modern communication, literary history and poetry.

A 10-week public programme of live and virtual events and workshops.

About the Speakers

SALEH ADDONIA is a London-based Eritrean-Ethiopian writer. Addonia has published a short story collection She is Another Country in Italian, translated by Nausikaa Angelotti. He has published short stories online such as the Italian newspapers’ Il Sole 24 Ore www.specimen.press (Switzerland), www.zammagazine.com (Belgium). www.viceversaliteratur.ch (Switzerland).

CHLOE ARIDJIS is the author of three three novels— Book of Clouds, Asunder, and Sea Monsters— and was a guest curator at Tate Liverpool. In 2014 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and, more recently, the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writers Award. Chloe is a member of XR WRITERS REBEL and is particularly interested in issues involving animal welfare.

VANNI BIANCONI was born in Locarno (Switzerland) in 1977 and lives in London. He published four poetry collections in Italian. His poems, translated into various languages, have been published in book form, magazines and anthologies. In 2016 he published his first prose book in English, London as a Second Language. He’s the founder and artistic director of the Babel, festival of literature and translation of Bellinzona, www.babelfestival.com, and of the multilingual web-magazine “Specimen. The Babel Review of Translations”, www.specimen.press

VIOLA DI GRADO is an Italian author with works published in thirteen countries. With her first novel 70% Acrylic 30% Wool she became the youngest winner of Italy’s prestigious Premio Campiello Opera Prima and the youngest finalist for the Premio Strega. Her novel Hollow Heart was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the PEN Literary Awards.

XIAOLU GUO is a London based novelist, essayist and filmmaker. Named as a Granta’s Best of Young British Novelist in 2013, she has published several novels and non fictions both in English and in Chinese. Her novels include A Concise Chinese English Dictionary For Lovers (shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2007), Village Of Stone (nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize) and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2018, and shortlisted for the Costa Book Award, RSL Ondaatje Award and Folio Prize. Her most recent novel is A Lover’s Discourse (2020). She is also an award wining film director. Her feature film She, A Chinese received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Film Festival. She had her film retrospectives at the Swiss Cinematheque (2010) and London’s Whitechapel Gallery (2019). She is currently a writer in residence at Columbia University in New York.

ZINOVY ZINIK Moscow-born British author Zinovy Zinik lost his Soviet citizenship with his emigration from the USSR in 1975. He arrived in London via Jerusalem and Paris in 1976. Zinik’s fourteen books of prose include novels, collections of short stories and essays that dwell on the subjects of dual existence of bilingual immigrants, religious converts and social outcasts. His short stories were adapted for BBC Radio 3 and his novel The Mushroom Picker was made into a film by the BBC TV (1993). Zinik’s shorter prose appeared in The New Yorker, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Encounter, Index on Censorship, N+1, and other periodicals. He contributed to the Times Literary Supplement and BBC radio. His recent books in English include an autobiographical tale History Thieves (2011) and his Gothic novel Sounds Familiar or the Beast of Artek (2016). His new novel in Russian The Orgone Box (2017), nonfiction A Yarmulke under the Turban (2018) and a collection of stories My Father's Leg and Other Relics (2020) were published in Russia. (More info: https://www.unitedagents.co.uk/zinovy-zinik)

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Influx Press is an independent publisher based in north east London, founded by Gary Budden and Kit Caless. We are committed to publishing innovative and challenging fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from across the UK and beyond. Formed in 2012, we have published titles ranging from award-nominated fiction debuts and site-specific anthologies to squatting memoirs and radical poetry. We won the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses. Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams won the prestigious James Tait Black Award in 2018, and our titles have been shortlisted and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Edge Hill Prize, the Jhalak Prize, The Encore Award, The Everyman Bollinger Wodehouse Prize, and the Gordon Burn Prize. Sanya Semakula joined the team as assistant editor in 2016, and Jordan Taylor-Jones filled out the lineup in 2019 as events and publicity officer.