The Art of Hosting a Live Literature Event

Our recent Salon, held at The Lamb, Bloomsbury

This year, I began running a literary salon with the author Sam Mills, attended by a mixture of writers, publishers and reviewers. We wanted to run an event because the literary lifestyle can be rather solitary, whether you’re a writer scribbling away in a café, or a reviewer typing up your thoughts at home. There’s an idea that publishing is all boozy lunches and so on, but many writers don’t have time for much socialising, and can be quite awkward in crowds anyway. There are lots of people we speak to online, or whose books we read, but rarely get the opportunity to see in the flesh, so we wanted an opportunity to bring people together and make those connections a bit more real.

We chose a salon because we were bored of the typical literary event. Going to launches and talks in Manchester, we found that the most enjoyable part of the evening would often be when the guests and speakers had left the bookshop or venue and decamped to a nearby pub – that was where boundaries between speaker and attendee broke down, people became less inhibited and more indiscreet. So we decided to skip straight to that stage!

We think the salon format helps to break down elitism, or at least shyness. The point is that everyone can turn up and complete strangers can mingle and connect. There will be a wide range of attendees, from established names and big sellers to first novelists and authors who work in other fields to support their writing. We also try to bring together genres which don’t often meet, from YA romance writers to niche literary types and translation specialists. In terms of being ‘industry only’, writers are more accessible now than ever, with social media, blog tours, festivals, readings and the like -  this salon isn’t going to change that. It just gives writers and publishers the opportunity to mix on an equal footing, without the pressure to perform.

My experience of running the salon has made me think more about the range of literary events which happen throughout the UK, and the efforts that hosts go to in order to make their event special.  So here, I have asked five talented hosts to give me their top tip for organising a great literary event.

What’s the best event you’ve been to, and what makes it so memorable? Let us know in the comments below.

The Events Planner - Sam Missingham

George RR Martin & Robin Hobb
onstage at the Freemason's Hall

I approach author events by thinking about the readers first and foremost. When we ran the Virtual Romance festival we asked ourselves who the readers were and what we thought would excite and engage them. We built a program of events to do just that - so a whole day for romance and erotica fans and another day offering professional development sessions for authors. We had huge engagement. We always do follow up research of our events to get feedback and to continually improve.

I also ran a fantasy event in the summer with George RR Martin and Robin Hobb in the Freemason's Hall in central London. George RR Martin is an author holding a unique position, but the same things apply. We asked ourselves the same fundamental question - what would fantasy fans want from of an evening with George and Robin? We obviously had HUGE interest in both authors in their professional and personal lives. The interviewer, their editor Jane Johnson, weaved questions to tease insight and snippets out of both authors balancing deeper questions with lighter ones.

We gave a lot of thought to the venue for the event, understanding the need for a sense of drama. The Freemason's Hall was perfect - when we were scouting the venue, we found the stage with 3 giant masonic thrones and a plinth with a hanging sword - what more could we want? We spent a lot of effort on the staging and lighting to ensure a quality experience for attendees. We also asked Game of Thrones cosplayers along to add more drama, as well as them entertaining the queues. They also created a focal point in the moments before the authors came onto the stage.

Literature events are no different from other events; people should leave entertained and feeling that it was money well spent. I'd like to think everyone leaves a HarperCollins event buzzing with ideas.

Sam Missingham is head of events at Harper Collins. You can follow her on Twitter here

The Live Literature Host: Daniel Carpenter

Daniel reading at the New Libertines event, Manchester

If there’s just one piece of advice I could give about how to run a regular live literature night – especially one with an open mic – it’s this: be welcoming.

That’s not just when you’re up on stage talking to the audience, or introducing performers. It isn’t even just when you’re talking to people during breaks (and you should be). It’s in the programming.

We learned it the hard way. We had been running Bad Language in Manchester for around a year when we noticed the audience dropping off quietly. We thought we’d been doing everything right - we had a great venue, we were free, and we had some excellent regular performers who came month by month to read on our stage. Plus, we always had a busy waiting list.

But we realised something: those regular performers were, month in month out, the only ones getting the chance to perform. And those people on the waiting list? They never got the chance, and they stopped showing up. In the end, the initial burst of popularity and excitement, which new events tend to get boosted by, had kind of blinkered us. Here we were, thinking we’d pulled together a group of like-minded individuals, forming our own little collective; when actually, what we had done is closed ourselves off.

Our solution was simple: 10 open mic spaces every month. Five go to regulars (who can’t perform more than twice in a row), the other five were reserved for performers who had never been on our stage before. It sounds a bit managerial, but actually it was a way of being welcoming to new people.

And it worked.

Bad Language got its audience back and went from strength to strength. Myself, Nicola West and Joe Daly ran it for four years in the back of a pub before two of us moved to London. In that time we did festival stages, and performed at the Royal Exchange – that was because of the reputation we’d managed to gain. Since we left, Joe and new host Fat Roland have taken Bad Language to new heights – with events for Manchester Literature Festival, Kendal Calling and two sold out nights for Mercury Nominee Kate Tempest.

I have the feeling that if we hadn’t opened ourselves up back then – we’d have closed ourselves off from all of that.

Daniel Carpenter is an author with work online at Metazen and The Irish Literary Review. His short fiction has appeared in the Boo Books anthology After The Fall and has been shortlisted for the Manchester Climate Change Short Story Competition. His non-fiction has been published on Tor Dot Com and Bookmunch.

The Salon Host - Meike Ziervogel

The Peirene Salon in full swing (photo from BBC website)

I have been running the Peirene Salon since 2009. It takes place four times a year in my own house. 60 people get wined and dined. Part of the evening is an hour-long reading and talk by an internationally acclaimed author. Guests include writers, readers, artists and critics. Some guests I know, others I have never met before. The evening starts at 7.30 when guests arrive and mingle with a glass of wine. Then at 8.15 we all sit down in my front room – on primary school chairs so we can all fit in. It's very intimate and cosy. For an hour the author will talk and read followed by a Q&A. Afterwards there is buffet dinner and more drink. Most people leave around 11 to catch the tube home but some linger to drink Scottish whiskey that my husband serves.

My tip for a successful salon: host it at home. On the continent, traditionally a salon always took place in a woman's house. You don't need a big space. Hosting a public event in a private space releases a lot of warm and unexpected creative energy. It also facilitates wonderful contacts.

Meike Ziervogel is an author whose novels Magda and Clara’s Daughter are publishedin the UK by Salt. She also runs the award winning boutique publishing house Peirene Press. If you want to read more about the Peirene's Salons, have a look here.

The Chair: Joanna Walsh

Joanna Walsh

Read the book. If you can’t read the book (and if you’re chairing a large panel at short notice, you might not be able to), go to the website, read the wikipedia page, the reviews.

Get there early enough to say Hi. Ask people how they pronounce their names, their book titles, and whether there are questions they particularly want to avoid/address. Keep a couple of questions in reserve in case answers are short.

It might be better to stay away from the drinks table.

Stella Duffy told me, when you get up to speak, smile. The audience will smile back. Don’t speak too fast, especially at first. Introduce the book as well as the author. The audience won’t all have read it and will need a brief description.

Occasionally, you will fuck up. You will forget the book title, mispronounce the author’s name. You will probably realise this immediately. Don’t panic: apologise, and carry on. Also, it’s ok not to keep on track. Writers have moved me almost to tears with passionate and complicated off-piste answers. If something interesting is happening, go with it. One author jumped up & began to demonstrate the moves she’d learnt as a masseuse.

Audiences are often shy when you hand questions over to them. Think of a question you can ask them to start things off. When an audience member asks a question, repeat it (possibly more concisely) so everyone can hear. This also gives panellists time to think.

You will get one person (only one, if you’re lucky), who will ask a question that will turn into a life story, an attempt to promote a book, or an airing of a long term, and long-winded, grievance. I still have no idea how to cut these people off politely. I’m probably a little too generous.

Think in advance about how to wind things up. Then thank everyone, repeat any contact info the panellists would like you to pass on, and if the books are for sale/the authors are signing after the session, say so.

Joanna Walsh’s writing has been published by Granta, Dalkey, Salt, and others, and she has forthcoming work with Galley Beggar, Readux, and Bloomsbury. She is Fiction Editor at 3:AM Magazine, and runs @readwomen2014. She has designed and chaired literary events for The Port Eliot Festival, L’Institut Francais, Peirene Press, Shakespeare & Company, and many more.

@badaude

http://badaude.typepad.com

The Speakeasy Host: Nicci Cloke

Richard Milward reading at Speakeasy

I run Speakeasy, a monthly night at Drink, Shop, Do in King’s Cross. We’ve been running for a little over eighteen months now, and have 4-6 authors reading each time. The reading isn’t the most important part though; we’re a night which is all about celebrating writing, and so we get our writers to do exactly that, off the cuff and on the spot – we ask our audience to suggest a theme, and during the interval, in teams, the authors write a short piece of fiction on that theme. The results are sometimes chilling, sometimes poignant, and almost always silly. Past themes have included ‘Beards Go Camping’, ‘bungalows’, ‘small lizards,’ and ‘an inexplicable coincidence on the Chiswick High Road’.

The audience participation is very important to us – authors love readers, and readers love authors, so really the main objective of any literary night should be to give them a fun, interesting (and silly) place to come together.

Nicci Cloke’s second novel Lay Me Down will be released by Vintage in February 2015. Read more about Speakeasy here