Salon at Savoy Cancelled BUT LIVE ONLINE via Facebook Live.

Dearest Salonista,

Polly Samson, Pete Paphides & John Niven: Salon Online via Facebook Live.

If you’ve read Station Eleven or the Plague you’ll know big public gatherings are not a great idea right now, whatever any government says.  We’re keeping calm and being responsible. So, to look after you all and those you love, we’ve taken the difficult decision not to stage a Salon at the Savoy on April 3rd.

But — and this is a good but – the Salon will be online! You can join me and Pete Paphides, John Niven and Polly Samson LIVE on our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/DamianBarrLiterarySalon/

You can enjoy LIVE exclusive readings from our incredible writers and post questions too. AND we’re going to be giving away signed books to some of you lucky viewers so tune in for a chance to win.

Please do join us for our first ever online Salon.

Thank you for being as understanding as always. Like many small arts groups, this is hitting us hard financially and organizationally.  If you would like a refund on your ticket, please request through Eventbrite.

Take good care of yourselves.

We hope to see you on Facebook Live on April 3rd from 7pm.

Your Salonnière,

Damian

Join us for the first Salon of 2020! We live in a world on the edge of change: forced migration, climate chaos and Trump-Brexit all tilt our axis. We need stories now more than ever—to help us understand how others faced other changes so we might not just survive but thrive. Plus ça change?

When Pete Paphide’s parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no money and only a little English. Everything changed. The Paphides family opened a fish-and-chip shop in Acocks Green - The Great Western Fish Bar is where Pete learned about banter and Britishness. And music—all the music. Pete stopped speaking from 4 to 7 seeking refuge in bittersweet pop. From ABBA to The Police, songs provided a safe space from domestic tensions. This warm-hearted coming-of-age memoir will have you craving salty chips and a vinyl collection. We’re delighted to host Pete’s world premiere of Broken Greek.

1960. The world is flirting with revolution and disaster and the Greek island of Hydra is a heady microcosm. Everything is more intense here—sunshine, beauty and envy. Hydra is home to a now-legendary circle of artists living messy tangled lives and all ruled over by writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Everyone is drawn into the drama between magnetic writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet called Leonard Cohen. Into the middle of all this lands teenage Erica, with a bundle of blank notebooks and grief for her mother who told her live her dreams - but what are her dreams? What, or who, is the price of paradise? Can utopia last? Polly Samson’s latest novel is wildly evocative - she returns to the Salon for another solo world-exclusive to whisk us all to Hydra in A Theatre for Dreamers.

John Niven’s new satire is set in a near-future America that’s so horribly real it veers dangerously close to non-fiction. This America survived two terms of Donald and is now in the first term of Ivanka. Frank Brill, a small-town newspaper editor in a post-print world, lives in a world of Trumpian horror where the economy has collapsed and morality with it. Frank’s already endured more than his fair share of misfortune when he’s given a terminal diagnosis. What now? Compile a ‘fuck-it list’: the names of all those to blame for all the tragedies that have befallen him. Buy a gun. He’s got nothing to lose. Right? John Niven makes his Salon debut with the world premiere of his disgustingly funny new novel The F*ck-it List.