We're excited to welcome Adelle Stripe to hear her discuss her wonderful new book, BASE NOTES: The Scents of a Life.
Doors: 6.30pm, starts: 6.45pm
Tickets are £4. Admission is free when purchasing a copy the book.
About the book:
A bedroom dreamer with a headful of Warhol, Adelle Stripe's formative years were ones of daytime drinking and religious fervour, frustrated mothers and reckless daughters, desire, ambition and the pursuit of creativity. Told through a prism of vintage perfumes, and played out in vivid detail with startling clarity and colour, Base Notes chronicles an unbridled Northern England of the late 20th century already fading from view.
With a keen eye for the absurd, an ear cocked to eavesdropped conversations and a nose that finds perfume wherever it goes, this tragicomic tale of working-class womanhood is no clichéd story of redemption or escape, but instead a bleakly funny yet unflinching memoir of dead-end jobs, lost weekends, brief encounters and those wild, forgotten characters who slip through the cracks.
Infused with acerbic observations and unexpected poignancy, Base Notes sees Adelle Stripe boldly laying her lived experience on the page, creating literature from a life less ordinary.
About the author:
Born in 1976, Adelle Stripe grew up in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire and worked a variety of dead-end jobs until enrolling at university as a creative writing student at the age of 30. Originally a poet, she published her first three collections as chapbooks, and wrote short stories for small press journals and literary magazines.
Her debut novel, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, was based on the life and work of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. First published by Wrecking Ball Press, it was later acquired by Fleet (Little, Brown). Black Teeth was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Portico Prize for Literature.
In 2022, her account of the controversial Irish/Algerian punk band, Fat White Family, was published by White Rabbit. Ten Thousand Apologies tells the band’s story in an innovative novelistic method. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, and a Rough Trade book of the year. The biography was shortlisted for the prestigious Penderyn Music Book Prize.
Adelle Stripe holds a PhD by Research in creative writing and is a Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester. As a journalist, she has written for The Quietus, Yorkshire Post, New Statesman and many more.
Tickets are £4.00. Admission is free when purchasing a copy the book. If you cannot make the event but would like a dedicated copy of a book, please email events.manchester@blackwell.co.uk or call us on 0161 274 3331.
Our event format is usually a 45 minute discussion between the author and interviewer, followed by a chance for audience members to ask questions. There will be the opportunity to get your book signed/dedicated after the event. Events are a brilliant opportunity to discover new books, meet authors and likeminded readers and learn something new.
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