Hollie McNish is a Sunday Times bestselling author and poet whose live readings are not to be missed. Here, she will be joined by fellow poet Michael Pedersen, reading from Boy Friends, his poetic memoir about friendship which Stephen Fry has declared ‘enchanting…astonishingly compelling…rare and to be treasured’ launching.

Expect strong language and adult content ribbon-wrapped in carefully and caringly sculpted poetry from their latest collections.

Hollie McNish is a Sunday Times bestselling author based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir – Nobody Told Me – of which The Scotsman stated ‘The World Needs this Book’. She has published four further collections of poetry – Papers, Cherry Pie, Plum and her most recent poetic memoir Slug…and other things I’ve been told to hate, which covers topics from grief to otters, grandmothers to Finnish saunas. She has just completed a re-imagining of Sophocles’ Greek Tragedy Antigone. She really loves plums and writing poems.

“One of the best poets we have” – Matt Haig

“Utterly fearless: an essential voice for our times” – Musa Okwonga

“like Pam Ayres on acid” – Lemn Sissay

“Rubbish” – Ellie Wheeler, The Telegraph

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. He’s produced two acclaimed collections of poetry with a third slated for release in 2023. His prose debut, Boy Friends, was recently published by Faber & Faber to rave reviews in the UK and North America. Pedersen won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, the John Mather’s Trust Rising Star of Literature Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 ‘Writer of the Year’ at The Herald Scottish Culture Awards. With work anthologised by the likes of Pan MacMillan and Canongate Books, his writing has attracted plaudits from voices as diverse as: Stephen Fry, Irvine Welsh, Shirley Manson, Kae Tempest, Jackie Kay, Ian Rankin and Charlotte Church. Pedersen also co-founded the prize-winning literary collective Neu! Reekie! and regularly features on the BBC Arts networks.

‘Uncommonly romantic, irreverent and, at times, laugh out loud funny.’ —Shirley Manson

‘Enchanting…astonishingly compelling…sparklingly written…rare and to be treasured’.’ — Stephen Fry

‘A master of words. He plays them like music.’ —Kae Tempest

‘Lucid, lyrical, loaded, BOY FRIENDS is a love letter to friendship.’ —Jackie Kay