The Lonely Crowd will be previewing their forthcoming ninth issue at Little Man Coffee. Co, tomorrow evening from 7pm. Martina Evans will be reading poems from Issue 9 as well as a selection from her highly praised new collection Now We Can Talk Openly About Men. Recent Welsh Book of the Year-winner John Freeman reads new work, including the moving sequence ‘Celebrating the Life.’ Gareth E. Rees reads a brand new short story, ‘Thenar Space’, as well an extract from his acclaimed new novel, The Stone Tide. Poet Kate North reads from Issue 9 and her forthcoming collection The Way Out and Anna-Marie Young reads ‘Barafundle’, a beautiful meditation on loss, and Young’s first published work. Plus Christopher Cornwell reads from his Lonely Press debut (‘a joyous collection’ – New Welsh Review) Ergasy, while Lonely Crowd Artist-in-Residence Jo Mazelis reads from her WBOTY ’17-shortlisted Ritual, 1969. Admission free.

Christopher Cornwell lives, studies and works in Swansea. His poetry has been featured in The Lonely Crowd, New Welsh Review, The Crunch, The Lampeter Review and Wales Arts Review for whom he also contributes criticism. He is Editor of The Gull online magazine. Ergasy is his first collection.

Martina Evans grew up in County Cork and trained in Dublin as a radiographer before moving to London in 1988. She is the author of eleven books poetry and prose. Now We Can Talk Openly About Men will be published by Carcanet in May 2018. She is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and reviews for the Irish Times.

John Freeman is a prize-winning poet and critic whose work has appeared in magazines and anthologies over several decades. His most recent books are What Possessed Me (Worple Press),and Strata Smith and the Anthropocene (Knives Forks and Spoons Press), both published in 2016. Earlier collections include A Suite for Summer (Worple), White Wings: New and Selected Prose Poems (Contraband Books), Landscape with Portraits (Redbeck Press) and The Light Is Of Love, I Think: New and Selected Poems (Stride Editions). Stride also published a collection of essays, The Less Received: Neglected Modern Poets. John grew up in South London and lived in Yorkshire before settling in Wales. He taught for many years at Cardiff University and now lives in the Vale of Glamorgan. What Possessed Me won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award as part of the Wales Book of the Year Awards in November 2017.

Jo Mazelis is a prize-winningnovelist,short story writer, poet, photographer & essayist. Her debut novel Significance (Seren, 2014) won The Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2015. Her first collection of stories Diving Girls was short-listed for Commonwealth Best First Book & Welsh Book of the Year. Her latest book, a collection of short stories entitled, Ritual, 1969 (Seren, 2016), was long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize & shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year in 2017.

Kate North has written a novel (Eva Shell ,Cinnamon, 2007) and poetry collection (Bistro, Cinnamon, 2012). Her second poetry collection,The Way Out will be available from Parthian in 2018.

Gareth E. Rees is the founder and editor of the website Unofficial Britain (wwww.unofficialbritain.com), author of The Stone Tide [Influx Press 2018] and Marshland [Influx Press, 2013]. His stories and essays have featured in Unthology 10 [Unthanks Books, 2018] An Unreliable Guide to London [Influx Press, 2016], Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography [Rowman & Littlefield, 2015], Mount London [Penned in the Margins, 2014], The Ashgate Companion to Paranormal Cultures [Ashgate, 2013], Acquired for Development By [Influx Press, 2012] and the spoken word album with Jetsam, A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes [Clay Pipe Music, 2013]. He lives in Hastings with his two daughters and a dog named Hendrix.

Anna-Marie Young is a doctorate student at Cardiff University in creative writing. She is working on an upcoming collection entitled ‘Flight’ which was long-listed for the New Welsh Writing Awards: People, Place & Planet.

About the Editor

John Lavin has a doctorate from the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David,as well as an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University. The former Fiction Editor of Wales Arts Review, he edited their short story anthology, A Fiction Map of Wales, as well as their online series Story: Retold. His short fiction has appeared in The Incubator, Spork Press, Dead Ink and The Lampeter Review. His criticism has appeared in The Irish Times, Wales Arts Review and The Welsh Agenda. He is the founder and editor of The Lonely Crowd and The Lonely Press.

Photo of Martina Evans © Joanne O’Brien.