In the first of our Afternoon Author events that we have launched for the start of the year, we were delighted to welcome author, sound artist and scholar Ellen Wiles to The Bookery who was joined in conversation with Mary Morris the Director of Arvon, the UK’s home of creative writing. Arvon have creative writing houses in Devon (where Mary is based) , Shropshire, Yorkshire, and a virtual house – Arvon at Home.

Recognising that during the long, dark and cold winter nights that it is not always so easy for some of our customers to attend an evening author event we have arranged a series of Author Events across January, February and March taking place in The Bookery on weekday afternoons. For the first of these Afternoon Author events Ellen and Mary provided us with an engaging and entertaining afternoon with our customers enjoying tea and cake listening to and talking with both Ellen and Mary.

Before reading extracts from her new book The Unexpected, Ellen took us through some of the experiences that has shaped her writing and influences that led to the creation of her second fiction book. Before focusing on writing Ellen explained that she had worked as a barrister for seven years, specialising in human rights and environmental and planning law working on international legal projects in Thailand, Botswana, and Myanmar. She shared with the audience some of the insights she gathered from working in these different cultures which had also influenced her debut novel The Invisible Crowd. Ellen is based in Exeter, teaches creative writing at the university and plays the flute professionally.

The Unexpected follows two women in their mid-thirties, Robin and Kessie, who each want to have a family but the path isn’t straightforward — and then they find themselves platonically co-parenting a baby, and need to figure out what to do. Themes are broadly friendship, motherhood and social change. It also looks at alternative kinship structures in other human and animal cultures, and how the legal system has evolved to reflect realities for unconventional families, and generally queering/questioning the nuclear family. After reading several funny and thought provoking passages from the book Mary explored a number of themes with Ellen with the audience joining the discussion to share their experiences of being a mother.

Mary and Ellen then responded to a variety of questions from the audience from which we learnt how carefully Ellen listens to how people really speak and how she then weaves this into the dialogue she creates. The conversation also covered how, when and where she prefers to write and which other authors had influenced her writing. Mary explored with Ellen how her experience as an anthropologist influenced the book and amongst other topics Ellen explained the process that resulted in the cover for the book, after which Ellen signed copies of her book for the audience.

We thank all of our customers who joined us on the afternoon.

We will be back with more Afternoon Author events and with Holly Watt – The Last Truths We Told,  the first of our evening author events on January 23rd.