A taste of literature!
Celebrating true literature and rubbing shoulders with the best
writers over wonderful wine will be the British Council and Park Street
Mews whose collaboration will bring a wealth of bookworm satisfation.
The ‘Book and Wine tasting’ event will be held tomorrow at the Park
Street Mews and will showcase Sri Lankan writers of a Gratiaen breed
such as Shehan Karunathilake and Senaka Abeyratne.
Be prepared to see some of UK’s biggest names in the form of Benjamin
Zephaniah, Sophie Hannah, Rob Mackenzie and Catherine Smith. The British
Council has organised this event as part of the Animating Literature
program with the key objective of introducing new Sri Lankan and UK
writing to the literary public along with a sampling of fine wines from
Spain.
The distinguished literatti will reveal a different perspective of
literature to alter the stereotyped belief that all literature is merely
a “book on the shelf”. Speaking to the Sunday Observer magazine was
Pravin Pereira of the Park Street Mews said, “We’ll be offering
delicious cuisine to accompany the Spanish wine since the Park Street
Mews has always had the ideal atmopshere to get writing going.
We should also mention that we have a good Sunday brunch buffet where
Chef Sharif and his team will be dishing out a sumptuous spread
featuring both western and eastern delights that comes at a nominal
price.” So eat your heart out at the Mews!
Catherine Smith
Cathy Smith Bowers is an English-speaking novelist and drama
queen having acted as a Princess at the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto.
Living in Tyron, she teaches in the M.F.A. Writing Program at Queens
University in Charlotte and at U.N.C. Asheville and is a poet Laureate.
Rob Mackenzie
Glasgow-born Scottish poet Rob A. Mackenzie received a law degree
from Aberdeen University and then abandoned the possibility of
significant personal wealth by switching to theology at Edinburgh
University.
A musician who failed to achieve stardom, he spent a year in Seoul,
eight years in a Lanarkshire housing scheme, five years in Turin, and
now lives in Edinburgh with his wife and daughter where he organises the
Poetry at the Great Grog reading series by night and works as a Church
of Scotland minister by day.
His pamphlet collection, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, was published
by HappenStance Press in 2005. The Opposite of Cabbage was published
this year by Salt Publishing. His poems, articles and criticism have
featured in many literary publications over the last decade or so. He is
an associate editor at Magma magazine.
Benjamin Zephaniah
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is a British Jamaican Rastafarian
writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English
literature, and was 48th of The Times list of Britain’s top 50 post-war
writers in 2008.
Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah is an English-born poet and novelist. From 1997 to 1999
she was Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge,
and between 1999 and 2001 she was a junior research fellow of Wolfson
College, Oxford. She currently resides with her family in Cambridge. In
2004, she was named one of the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation
poets. Her poems are studied at GCSE, A-level and degree level across
the UK. |