BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Housmans Bookshop - ECPv6.18.2//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Housmans Bookshop X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://housmans.com X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Housmans Bookshop REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20240331T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20241027T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20270328T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20271031T010000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261010T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261010T210000 DTSTAMP:20260914T155653Z CREATED:20260914T154932Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260914T155653Z UID:82493-1791660600-1791666000@housmans.com SUMMARY:ZINE LAUNCH: TRANNY CENTRAL DESCRIPTION:JOIN US FOR FOR THE LAUNCH OF THIS INCREDIBLE HISTORY OF THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT’S TRANSSEXUAL\, TRANSVESTITE AND DRAG QUEEN GROUP\, FROM TGIRLSONFILM\n\n\n\nCome for the launch of the third bumper edition of “Tranny Central”\, with new archival goodies and newly commissioned articles. \n\n\n\nIn Tranny Central\, TGirlsonFilm summons the spirits of our radical trans-sisters of the Gay Liberation Front. Take a trip back to the suffocating howl of seventies London and bask in the hash hazed memories of Rachel Pollack’s flat. The US had the Compton Cafeteria and Stonewall Riots: how did London’s premiere transvestite and transsexuals react to the bubbling queer rebellion? Often dismissed and erased\, it’s time to know the history. Get in your glad rags\, grab your slap\, and head straight to Tranny Central girl! \n\n\n\nWords\, Research & Organisation by Jaye HudsonVisual Design by Ror BrownIllustrations by Bug Bites \n\n\n\nWe are delighted and honoured to have readings from: \n\n\n\nRoz Kaveney \n\n\n\nMorgan M Page \n\n\n\n& Jaye Hudson \n\n\n\nCOPIES OF THE ZINE WILL BE AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE ON THE NIGHT. DRINKS WILL BE PROVIDED BUT PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BYOB. \n\n\n\nEVENT STARTS AT 19:30\, DOORS AT 19:00. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/zine-launch-tranny-central/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/LAUNCH-Instagram.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261009T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261009T210000 DTSTAMP:20260921T132053Z CREATED:20260921T132049Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260921T132053Z UID:82862-1791572400-1791579600@housmans.com SUMMARY:POETRY SERIES: NELL PERRY DESCRIPTION:Join us for another evening of cutting edge\, brilliant poetry. This time we will be launching Nell Perry’s incredible new work of hybridised poetics His Splendid Tables\, published by Runamok! \n\n\n\nHis Splendid Tables is a collection of hybrid writing combining wayward translation and poetic essay to explore\, variously\, what is lost and what is gained in the elegiac process\, and unremembered myths and histories of feminized people.‘Borstal Unthrum Loom’ interweaves a translation of Moschus’ ‘Lament for Bion’ into an extinct Kentish dialect\, with found material from the Assize trial records of Kentish witches and later writings thereon\, to consider the social construction of the witch\, and the treatment of women labelled\, tried and executed as such\, and to examine the poetics and dynamics of the pastoral.‘fey’ explores and resists representations of feminized bodies in various iterations\, from Arthurian texts\, of the mythical figure of Morgan le Fay\, to explore how the multiple meanings of the term ‘fey’ link femininity with illness\, disorder\, whimsy\, the supernatural and death.“Perry’s mythscape is a dappled and torn document\, both rich and bereft.” Megan Zword \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, but please RSVP below. Please also feel free to BYOB! \n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/poetry-series-nell-perry/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Poetry-Series-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260930T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260930T203000 DTSTAMP:20260925T115702Z CREATED:20260804T114036Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260925T115702Z UID:81132-1790794800-1790800200@housmans.com SUMMARY:CHARITY SHOP WORLD! with Tansy E. Hoskins DESCRIPTION:WE ARE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME TANSY E. HOSKINS TO HOUMANS TO TALK ABOUT HER GROUNDBREAKING\, MOVING NEW STUDY OF CHARITY SHOPS AND THE ROLES THEY PLAY IN MODERN CONSUMERIST CULTURE. \n\n\n\n‘Charity shops are ubiquitous and invisible. They anchor the high street\, employ thousands\, process millions of items. Yet far more is written about AI than this staple of 21st century Britain. Thank goodness\, then\, for Tansy Hoskins\, who deftly shows how the charity shop is both an escape from consumerism and an essential part of global capitalism. This is a rich and surprising book\, which takes you both to Accrington and Bangladesh\, providing financial expose as well as character studies.’— Aditya Chakrabortty\, Senior Economics Commentator\, The Guardian \n\n\n\nHave you ever wondered what happens to the contents of the bags you drop off at the charity shop? With over 80 billion pieces of clothing produced each year and with human made stuff now outweighing living biomass\, this is the story of the first sorting site for the deluge of items we discard every single day. Having spent decades exploring charity shops for bargains and treasure\, Tansy Hoskins decided to dig deep into the world of charity shop volunteering. From used underwear to wolf pelts\, Charity Shop World is a personal account of sorting through donations to reveal the entanglement of people and products. This book also investigates the export of clothes to overseas markets and landfill\, revealing hidden shareholders behind a multi-million pound business. \n\n\n\nTaking us to the heart of a country hit by austerity and the cost of living crisis\, Charity Shop World reveals surprising places of human connectivity\, where local communities struggle to find their way through economic hardship to reach a more sustainable way of living. \n\n\n\nIn a world where ‘broken’ things and ‘unwanted’ people are expelled to the margins of society\, this book is a powerful call for a new way of living to rise up from the debris of overproduction and consumption. \n\n\n\n‘A story of what happens to the leftovers of capitalism. Within the places of possibility\, persistence and promise there is hope. Beautifully told\, carefully bundled\, expertly delivered. Tansy Hoskins’ Charity Shop World is a page turner.’— Danny Dorling\, author of The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future \n\n\n\n‘What might fashion design look like as a public resource based on community and cooperation?  Charity Shop World answers that question by reconnecting us to the humanity underpinning every aspect of fashion\, everything that Big Fashion\, as Tansy calls it- chooses to ignore and exploit. Tansy’s sensitive and warm account of working in a charity shop offers a microcosm of what’s best and what’s worst in today’s fashion system and reveals how another fashion world is possible.  Fashion designers\, students and educators need to centre the end of life of garments from the very start of the design process and critically address waste colonialism in fashion – Charity Shop World should be on all fashion reading lists. Tansy asks us to reflect on\, ‘What do we truly need?’; it’s time for Big Fashion to answer that same question for the future of our people\, species and planet.’—Tanveer Ahmed\, Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Race\, Central Saint Martins\, University of the Arts London \n\n\n\nPlease note: We have had some intermittent errors with this event page\, so if you are unable to buy tickets please email us at shop@housmans.com or give us a call (020 7837 4473) to reserve tickets. It would be very helpful if you could also please describe the error you are encountering and what platform and device you were using at the time! Thank you. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/charity-shop-world-with-tansy-e-hoskins/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/images.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260822T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260822T210000 DTSTAMP:20260730T201249Z CREATED:20260729T161718Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260730T201249Z UID:80743-1787425200-1787432400@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: MILKING MOTHER EARTH: Fragments of an Investigation by Kaisa Saarinen DESCRIPTION:Come and celebrate the first pamphlet from Gauze Bonnet Press!\n\n\n\nThis pamphlet is a free-wheeling interdisciplinary exploration of rubber\, taking readers from Bangkok fetish bars to smallholder plantations in Vietnam\, looking through history from European colonisation of the homelands of latex to Victorian British moral panics about sex toys made from the material. Kaisa interweaves academic research with first hand accounts from her research trips and poetry both by herself and and others.  \n\n\n\nThroughout this journey\, she contemplates the feminised life of rubber. She speaks to women in the industry\, considers the history of rubber dildos\, finds womanhood in the poems of Vietnamese rubber laborers\, and wonders what it means to milk mother earth. \n\n\n\nThis work is born out of notes from her ongoing research project and artistic collaboration with Bart Seng Wen Long\, Rubber Dreams of its Lifetime. \n\n\n\nKaisa Saarinen is a former feral farmgirl based in London. She writes poetry\, fiction and non-fiction\, often blending them together in hybrid forms. Her books include the novel Weather Underwater (2023)\, and short-form collections Maitonaut (2024) and Voideuse (2022). In close collaboration with Bart Seng Wen Long\, she is leading the research-based art project Rubber Dreams of its Lifetime.’ \n\n\n\nReading and performing alongside Kaisa we have: \n\n\n\nBart Seng Wen LongCat Feliciano& Gabrielle Sicam \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, but please RSVP below! \n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-milking-mother-earth-fragments-of-an-investigation-by-kaisa-saarinen/ CATEGORIES:Book Talk,Feminist event,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_3537-1.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260721T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260721T210000 DTSTAMP:20260617T150316Z CREATED:20260617T145610Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260617T150316Z UID:79607-1784660400-1784667600@housmans.com SUMMARY:HOUSMANS POETRY SERIES: JD HOWSE DESCRIPTION:It starts with the Buggery Act of 1533. Or perhaps the arrest of Eleanor Rykener. Or perhaps the execution of James Pratt and John Smith. The truism goes that queer people have always been here\, but for as long as there have been written records of us those records have dealt with our suppression\, criminalisation\, and punishment. How can we construct a sense of our own history when its wilful erasure has been violently enacted time and time again across the centuries?  \n\n\n\nComposed over a ten year period\, Noises Again is a hugely ambitious and staggeringly complex literary collage that blurs the lines between literature and visual art. Stringing together scraps of text from history books and pornographic novels\, newspaper clippings and love letters\, drunk sexts and court records\, JD Howse explores the buried\, obscure ephemera of gay history and returns with a text by turns violent\, tragic\, erotic\, and confounding. This is a truly singular book\, defying characterisation\, description\, and logic.  \n\n\n\nOUR POETS\n\n\n\nJD Howse is a writer who works across poetry\, prose\, and collage. His debut collection Just Meat Not God was published in 2022 and he has published a number of pamphlets and artist’s books. He has a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway\, University of London\, and is the curator of Permeable Barrier.  \n\n\n\nAzad Ashim Sharma is the director of the87press and Editor at Philosophy and Global Affairs\, the CLR James Journal\, and The Hythe Review. He is a PhD Candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College\, University of London. He is the author of three poetry collections\, most recently\, Boiled Owls (Nightboat Books / Out-Spoken Press\, 2024) which was shortlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize. His second collection Ergastulum: Vignettes of Lost Time (Broken Sleep Books\, 2022) was the recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Guillén Award. In July 2025\, Azad was inaugurated as the Poet Laureate of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He lives in South London. \n\n\n\nCalliope Michail is a poet and translator\, currently undertaking a PhD at King’s College\, London. She is the Poetry Editor of Stillpoint Journal\, and her work has appeared in various publications. \n\n\n\nVJ René is the author of two pamphlets of poetry\, Scavengers (Salo Press\, 2021) and HYDRA (Marble Poetry\, 2020). Recent critical and creative works appear in Victorian Popular Fictions Journal\, Forum Journal and the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies.​ \n\n\n\nOliver Zarandi is a writer and filmmaker. His debut\, Soft Fruit In The Sun (Hexus Press)\, was described as being like ‘getting a hug from David Cronenberg.’ His follow-up\, Body Horror\, was shortlisted for the Prototype Prize in 2024. He is currently in development on his first film\, Skinny Boy. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event but please RSVP below. \n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-poetry-series-jd-howse/ CATEGORIES:Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Poetry-Series6.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260710T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260710T210000 DTSTAMP:20260704T102122Z CREATED:20260624T163946Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260704T102122Z UID:79973-1783710000-1783717200@housmans.com SUMMARY:HOUSMANS READING SERIES: LUKE ROBERTS PRESENTS 'BAD OMENS' DESCRIPTION:POET’S PROSE #2\n\n\n\nFor the next instalment of Poet’s Prose sequence (a series of events celebrating cross-disciplinary efforts by radical anglophone poets experimenting outside of the traditional lyric form) we welcome to Housmans the inimitable Luke Roberts\, who will be reading from his new book of essays\, aphorisms\, contemplations\, Bad Omens. \n\n\n\nDrawn from a decade’s worth of notebooks and journals\, Bad Omens is a lyrical narrative of art and grief in a time of crisis. From London’s pollen-covered streets to wildfires in Idaho\, gravesides in Paris to the Blackpool seafront\, we greet a landscape of lost causes\, unreasonable demands\, and utopian horizons. It’s ‘the part of the century where we’re losing our grip’\, and someone somewhere is owed an explanation. \n\n\n\nBad Omens struggles towards a poetics of beauty and debris\, everything worth saving sung through gritted teeth. \n\n\n\nLuke Roberts was born in 1987 and grew up in North Wales and the North of England. He is the author of many books and chapbooks of poetry\, including Beginning to End (Nightboat\, 2027)\, Home Radio (the87press\, 2021)\, and Glacial Decoys (Free Poetry\, 2021). His critical writing includes Living in History: Poetry in Britain\, 1945-1979 (Edinburgh University Press\, 2024)\, and Barry MacSweeney and the Politics of Post-War British Poetry (Palgrave\, 2017). As an editor\, he has contributed to a number of archival projects\, most recently: Quintets by Iliassa Sequin (Winter Editions\, 2026); Saborami: An Expanded Facsimile Edition by Cecilia Vicuña (Book Works\, 2024); and So Much For Life: Selected Poems by Mark Hyatt (Nightboat\, 2023). With Amy Tobin he runs the small press Distance No Object. He lives in London. \n\n\n\nPRAISE FOR BAD OMENS: \n\n\n\n‘Reading Luke Roberts’ book\, a memory of having lunch with Etel Adnan\, in Boulder\, beneath a tree the colour of butterscotch\, returns. There’s a golden thread\, I sometimes think\, that links all poets.  Sometimes it drops on the floor\, sometimes we pick it up.  Sometimes we cut it in half with a pair of sewing scissors.  Sometimes it snags on a jagged landscape.  Sometimes we have to weave it from scratch.’– Bhanu Kapil\, author of How To Wash A Heart \n\n\n\n‘I often turn to Luke Roberts for ideas. So it’s reassuring to turn to him here and find him looking around too\, piecing things together\, pulling them up\, bringing something back into focus before it’s lost\, setting things side by side\, recovering days\, observing his attention without time’s now ineffective analysis. Keeping track is hard\, holding things together is hurting and confusing; I’ll keep turning to him for more. And while I’m here\, how excellent to have Book Works and Luke Roberts in the same place!’ – Holly Pester\, author of The Lodgers \n\n\n\n‘Bad Omens is difficult to characterise: part narrative; part lyric; part poetics; part elegy; part interpretation of dreams; part clowning around\, it constructs the form it requires. Luke Roberts addresses his wounds and ours with anger and grace\, constructing memorials to losses private and collective and\, in doing so\, reminding us of the total permeability of the boundaries between the two. I loved it.’ – Helen Charman\, author of Mother State \n\n\n\n‘Alongside everyone else\, I’m confounded by immiseration\, war\, and ecological crisis\, and somehow Bad Omens makes me glad to be in the world\, helps me to recognise what it means to be here\, through its sublime descriptions that never condescend to silver linings or the mere affects of transformation.’ – Nisha Ramayya\, author of States of the Body Produced by Love \n\n\n\n‘Seductively spiky\, witty and tender\, Bad Omens is a deeply affecting notation of the texture of life lived. It wrestles with and flourishes in difficulty\, spinning grief into a search for something like song. Luke Roberts’ prose is a trail that always leads back to the poem\, whose fragments stutter into chorus and whose ‘I’ draws a collective around itself.’ – Daisy Lafarge\, author of Paul   \n\n\n\nPlease note this is a free event but please do book ahead. You can also reserve a copy of the book ahead of the event. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-reading-series-luke-roberts-presents-bad-omens/ CATEGORIES:Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Poetry-SeriesLUKE-PETER.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260704T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260704T203000 DTSTAMP:20260704T103150Z CREATED:20260604T113508Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260704T103150Z UID:79314-1783191600-1783197000@housmans.com SUMMARY:DREAMS AND GHOSTS WITH DOMINIC PETTMAN & EVERYDAY ANALYSIS DESCRIPTION:Join us for a conversation between two of the most exciting theorists of the digital realm\, Dominic Pettman and Alfie Bown \n\n\n\nWe are delighted to welcome our friends Everyday Analysis back to Housmans for what promises to be another stimulating reflection on the agonies and aporias of contemporary culture. \n\n\n\nThis time we have Dominic Pettman joining us\, to talk about some of the recurrent ideas that animate\, his recent publications\, The Forgetting of Dreams: Selected Oneiric Residues (published by Everyday Analysis) and Ghosting: On Disappearance (Polity\, 2025). \n\n\n\nDominic is emerging as one of our major theorists of the digital world. His work is especially accomplished at interrogating modes of disconnection\, loneliness and alienation that could only really exist now; in an epoch almost entirely mediated through a digital reflection of itself. \n\n\n\nblurbs: \n\n\n\nThe Forgetting of Dreams: Selected Oneiric Residues \n\n\n\nWe process our lives through riddles\, mysteries\, ciphers\, and enigmas – but we hesitate to share these with friends and family. In times gone by\, as for Freud\, dreams were considered a key to cosmic secrets. Today\, in all sorts of ways – both subtle and not – we are discouraged from sharing the content of our dreams\, unless we happen to be indulging in that most anachronistic ritual: lying prostrate on the psychoanalyst’s couch. Anywhere else\, an anecdote that begins\, “Last night I dreamed . . .” is usually met with a sigh and a defensive glazing of the eyes. In our over-burdened world\, any sharing of dreams is always already perceived as over-sharing. Contrary to this\, Pettman argues – the more we share tales of our isolated nocturnal journeys\, the better chance we have to understand the topography of our collective conundrum.  \n\n\n\nGhosting: On Disappearance \n\n\n\nAbandonment is as old as time\, but ghosting is a modern twist on this ancient experience. It translates this age-old phenomenon into our modern world of screens\, delete buttons and blocking options. Ghosting is not only an unpleasant experience\, or cowardly act\, but a symptom of our increasingly spectral – that is\, mediated and virtual – relationship to the world. The overabundance of new modes of communication has invited an almost infinite number of contacts and conversations. At the same time\, it has also offered an unprecedented opportunity for ignoring messages from others. And just as we invented the car crash when we invented automobiles\, we also encouraged ghosting when we created the internet. \n\n\n\nGhosting creates an empty space in our minds: a space faithfully tracing the silhouette of the one who ghosted us. But unlike traditional ghosts\, today’s ghosters simply disappear\, leaving behind a form of haunting that is closer to mourning: mourning for someone who is not in fact dead. In putting a kind of preemptive mourning into our everyday affairs\, ghosting tells us much about the current human relationship – or non-relationship – to a shared sense of mortality\, purpose\, and spirit.   \n\n\n\nThis book – the first sustained analysis of ghosting – traces the source of this vexed experience to\, and through\, our current media ecology\, technological networks\, political landscape\, collective psychology\, romantic mantras\, and deep sense of social neglect. \n\n\n\nDominic will be joined by the brilliant Alfie Bown\, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology at King’s College London. Alfie is the author of numerous brilliant interventions into the worlds of digital studies\, Marxism and psychoanalysis. His most recent books are Alfie Bown\, Post-Comedy (Polity\, 2024) and Dream Lovers: Capitalism and the Gamification of Relationships (London: Pluto\, 2022). \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, but you can reserve copies of the books through our ticket portal. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/dreams-and-ghosts-with-dominic-pettman-everyday-analysis/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/preeti-insta-16.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260624T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260624T203000 DTSTAMP:20260610T160219Z CREATED:20260610T160151Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260610T160219Z UID:79472-1782327600-1782333000@housmans.com SUMMARY:MAGAZINE LAUNCH: WEEKEND DESCRIPTION:COME AND CELEBRATE THE LAUNCH OF A BOLD NEW POETRY MAGAZINE AT HOUSMANS. FEATURING LUKE ROBERTS\, HARRIET ROSE AND OTHERS. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, please book your tickets below. Feel free to BYOB. 🙂 \n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/magazine-launch-weekend/ CATEGORIES:Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Weekend-6-1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260601T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260601T203000 DTSTAMP:20260601T160454Z CREATED:20260526T161718Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260601T160454Z UID:79112-1780340400-1780345800@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK TALK: Adrift in the South by Xiao Hai DESCRIPTION:When Xiao Hai turned fifteen\, his family paid a vocational-school teacher 1\,200 yuan to find him a factory job in Shenzhen. So began fifteen years spent moving between the garment mills and electronics factories of China’s fast-growing southern cities. \n\n\n\nAdrift in the South is a memoir of life as a migrant labourer in the twenty-first century\, making iPhones and baby clothes\, hand-stitching football shirts and cutting plastic into radios. Here\, Xiao Hai reveals the alienation and tedium of factory life\, the small indignities and indifference of the larger system. And he tells the story of how poetry led him somewhere unexpected: to join a small community of artists living\, working\, and studying together on the outskirts of Beijing. \n\n\n\nThis memoir is a landmark text from China’s migrant worker literature movement\, a grassroots group of writers providing an unvarnished account of what life is like for the 300 million migrant workers powering the world’s second-biggest economy. \n\n\n\nXiao Hai will conversation for around 45 minutes to an hour\, followed by a q&a and signing session. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-talk-adrift-in-the-south-by-xiao-hai/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/9781738536269.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260508T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260508T203000 DTSTAMP:20260507T141651Z CREATED:20260415T135408Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260507T141651Z UID:77744-1778266800-1778272200@housmans.com SUMMARY:SOLD OUT: REVOLUTIONARY FORGIVENESS: D. K. RENTON in conversation with Barnaby Raine DESCRIPTION:THIS EVENT IT NOW SOLD OUT. TO BE ADDED TO A WAITING LIST PLEASE EMAIL SHOP@HOUSMANS.COM\n\n\n\nHousmans are delighted to welcome the legendary theorist\, thinker and lawyer D.K. Renton to launch what we believe may be one of the most original\, and vital\, works of left wing thought to appear in recent years. He will be joined in conversation by the scholar and journalist Barnaby Raine. \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nForgiveness is necessary in the long fight for a just world—but it is only possible after the oppressed are victorious \n\n\n\nFor too long\, revolutionary social movements have reconciled to defeat. We must start winning again. Forgiveness is a crucial strategy for remaking the world\, to secure and sustain victories\, to transform one-time enemies into friends. With deep political commitment\, D. K. Renton makes the case for forgiveness—but of a particularly unruly sort. Tracing the tragic abuse of Eleanor Marx and Jane Wells\, the mistakes of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission\, and the redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye\, Renton urges us to forgive\, but only after tearing down the citadels of the rich. \n\n\n\nRevolutionary Forgiveness connects collective struggle with the individual’s search for justice to demand a better future for all—when the oppressed will be magnanimous in power\, and even former oppressors will be free. \n\n\n\n“Renton rescues ‘forgiveness’ from the pulpit and returns it\, bloodied but lucid\, to history.” \n\n\n\n— Richard Seymour\, author of Disaster Nationalism \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nTHIS EVENT IT NOW SOLD OUT. TO BE ADDED TO A WAITING LIST PLEASE EMAIL SHOP@HOUSMANS.COM \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-revolutionary-forgiveness-by-d-k-renton/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260503T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260503T203000 DTSTAMP:20260503T161003Z CREATED:20260503T161001Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260503T161003Z UID:78547-1777834800-1777840200@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: PRIVATISING HUMANITY BY KATE BAYLIS DESCRIPTION:JOIN KATE BAYLIS AND ADRIENNE BULLER FOR AN ESSENTIAL CONVERSATON ON HOW BASIC HUMAN NEEDS BECOME FINANCIAL ASSETS.\n\n\n\n Privatising Humanity is a powerful exposé of how finance turns our basic human needs into assets. \n\n\n\nWe have entered a new era of turbo-charged financial extraction. Having amassed huge reserves\, global finance capital is seeking out fresh areas for profitable investments. Virtually all aspects of our lives are now targeted by someone seeking to make a profit. \n\n\n\nIn Privatising Humanity\, Kate Bayliss shows how wealthy investors\, including asset managers\, target our essential services. When it comes to investments in these sectors\, shareholder profits are funded by us\, the end-users and tax-payers who simply wish to meet our basic human needs for water\, warmth and shelter. We have no alternative but to pay into these structures that often generate massive returns for investors and dysfunctional systems for society. \n\n\n\nUnpacking the details of these processes in three sectors in the UK – water\, energy and housing – Bayliss exposes the harmful consequences of this model\, which is contributing to deepening inequality. \n\n\n\nKate Baylis will joined by Adrienne Buller\, author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism (a Housmans Top 10 for many months in 2022). They with be in conversation for around 45 minutes to an hour\, followed by a q&a and signing session. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-privatising-humanity-by-kate-baylis/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/81Fwp1BcN2L._SL1500_-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260328T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260328T213000 DTSTAMP:20260318T134149Z CREATED:20260302T174715Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260318T134149Z UID:76460-1774724400-1774733400@housmans.com SUMMARY:POETRY: Jazmine Linklater\, Fran Lock\, Sascha Aurora Akhtar and more DESCRIPTION:Please join us for our second poetry night of the year. This time we celebrate Jazmine Linklater’s immense and devastating new long poem ‘Snagged on red thread’ (published by Monitor). Reading alongside Jazmine we have Fran Lock\, Sascha Aurora Akhtar\, Al Anderson\, Harriet Rose and JD Howse. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, but please RSBP below to avoid disappointment. \n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/poetry-jazmine-linklater-frank-lock-sascha-aurora-akhtar-and-more/ CATEGORIES:Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260317T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260317T203000 DTSTAMP:20260211T162935Z CREATED:20260211T162932Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260211T162935Z UID:75767-1773774000-1773779400@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK TALK: Superweak: Thinking in the 21st Century: Laurent de Sutter in conversation with Alfie Bown DESCRIPTION:Using the stealth capacities of hermeneutic distrust as his weapon of choice\, de Sutter’s writing breaks into unrecovered areas of subtle teachings\, shedding light on philosophemes gleaned from Aristotle to punk-led attitude\, biojewelry\, and the historical buildup of authority billed to the triumph of reason in its many intrusive morphs.— Avital Ronell\, New York University \n\n\n\nWe welcome back the brilliant Alfie Bown to Housmans\, this time in the company of Belgian philosopher Laurent de Sutter. The two will be focusing their conversation on the nature and necessity (or\, rather\, superfluity [as posited by Laurent]) of critique. As a jumping off point they will be using Laurent’s recent work of theory\, Superweak: Thinking in the 21st Century. The book is described below: \n\n\n\n‘We have become superheroes. Nothing can resist us anymore: not persons\, ideas\, facts\, realities\, or beings. We owe our superhuman strength to a tool we have taken up that submits everything to the scrutiny of our judgment: critique. After its first formulation at the end of the sixteenth century\, the project of critique spread from one sphere to another until it became almost universal: we have all of us been transformed by our equal capacity to judge\, approve\, and reject. \n\n\n\nIf modernity is defined as the journey we have taken to move away from the myths and dogmas of the past\, then critique\, with its emphasis on reason and the autonomy of judgment\, has been the lynchpin of modernity. \n\n\n\nToday\, however\, the critical project shows signs of exhaustion. We are beginning to realize that being right is useless\, now that everyone can lay claim to the same power as we can. The democratization of reason\, proceeding alongside the development of critique through modernity\, has produced a stalemate: for every judgment that we pronounce\, there is another opposing one – with grounds as solid as our own\, and the same right to assert itself. Rather than elevating us above the world\, critique has mired us in an impasse of claim and counter-claim. The age of critique is now over and in its place we need to develop a postcritical form of thinking\, one he calls “superweak\,” a form of thinking based not on establishing grounds\, pronouncing judgment\, and determining duty\, but on welcoming possibility\, exploring what the world has to offer\, and cultivating a vertiginous appreciation for moving within a world less grounded and less bounded by the terms of critical reason.’ \n\n\n\nProfessor Laurent de Sutter is Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Brussels. He is the author of more than twenty books translated into a dozen languages. In English\, he is the author of Narcocapitalism: Life in the Age of Anaesthesia (Polity\, 2017) and After Law (Polity\, 2020\, French Voices Award\, Leopold Rosy Prize of the Belgian Royal Academy). He is the editor of the Theory Redux series at Polity Press and of Perspectives Critiques at Presses Universitaires de France. \n\n\n\nDr Alfie Bown is Lecturer in Digital Media Culture and Technology at Royal Holloway\, University of London. His books include Dream Lovers (Pluto\, 2022)\, an investigation into dating apps\, sexbots and virtual relationships\, Post-Comedy (Polity\, 2024)\, Post-Memes (Punctum\, 2019) and The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity\, 2017)\, a psychoanalytic study of video games which is available in Spanish\, Portuguese\, Serbian\, Slovak and many other languages. Currently\, he is working on the relationship between psychoanalysis and cybernetics. He is also editor of Everyday Analysis\, a pamphlet house and monthly talk series. \n\n\n\nAlfie and Laurent will talk for around one hour\, we will then have an open discussion. At Housmans\, we welcome debate and challenging ideas\, so please do attend in that spirit. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-talk-superweak-thinking-in-the-21st-century-laurent-de-sutter-in-conversation-with-alfie-bown/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/USETHIS-1.webp END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260310T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260310T203000 DTSTAMP:20260211T140928Z CREATED:20260211T140924Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260211T140928Z UID:75740-1773169200-1773174600@housmans.com SUMMARY:TALK: NO TO NUCLEAR! Linda Pentz Gunter in conversation with Jonathon Porritt DESCRIPTION:‘Linda Pentz Gunter has done a great service in highlighting the nuclear chain reaction and exposing the huge human and environmental costs. We need this book for our environment and a peaceful world’ \n\n\n\n– Jeremy Corbyn \n\n\n\nWe are delighted to welcome Linda Pentz Gunter to Housmans to discuss her new book No To Nuclear. Brilliantly written\, clear\, concise and exacting\, this brilliant book shows us that there is no silver bullet for the climate crisis—but that hasn’t stopped people searching. Seizing its chance\, the nuclear power industry wants us to believe that theirs is the only technical fix for our deliverance. The public\, politicians and the media have been easily swayed. \n\n\n\nThis should come as no surprise. After all\, the pro-nuclear PR campaign is richly funded and has an army of lobbyists sowing myths while the industry reaps the rewards of taxpayer-funded subsidies. \n\n\n\nNo To Nuclear calls the industry’s bluff. Blasting aside its claims to be safe and green\, Linda Pentz Gunter makes the irresistible case that nuclear power is too slow\, too expensive\, too dangerous and too integrally connected to the nuclear weapons complex\, to serve as a rational energy choice. \n\n\n\nThe book also delves into the lives of Indigenous peoples and communities of colour\, who have been harmed the most by the nuclear sector\, and questions whether the way we devalue nature and the environment is costing us the chance of a genuinely just energy transition. \n\n\n\nLinda Pentz Gunter is the founder of the US-based non-profit Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Previously\, she was a journalist at USA Network\, Reuters\, and The Times. She launched\, and writes for Beyond Nuclear’s online magazine\, Beyond Nuclear International. \n\n\n\nJoining Linda in conversation we welcome the environmentalist and writer Johnathon Porritt. Jonathon is a great advocate for the Green Party and frequently contributes to magazines\, newspapers and books\, and appears on radio and television. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n‘Linda Pentz Gunter has the great skill that more writers should have: to take a crucial and complex issue and make it truly accessible. This rigorous and comprehensive work is a gift to everyone who wants to understand the nuclear power paradox’ \n\n\n\n– Kate Hudson\, previous General Secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/talk-no-to-nuclear-linda-pentz-gunter-in-conversation-with-jonathon-porritt/ CATEGORIES:Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9780745352107.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260307T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260307T203000 DTSTAMP:20260211T131419Z CREATED:20260211T131259Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260211T131419Z UID:75710-1772910000-1772915400@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: The Mixed + Multiracial Guide To Wellbeing with Namalee Bolle DESCRIPTION:Join us for a celebratory evening of radical mixed + multiracial discussion!\n\n\n\n“What aaaaarrrrrrrrrreeeeeee you?!”If you just had that familiar sinking feeling\, this book is for you. Do you point out how alienating and othering that question is? Stand your ground and explain that you don’t have to justify your existence with a pie chart and a family tree? Or keep the peace\, bite your tongue and smile politely at yet another person treating you like a science project? While each mixed person’s experience is different\, there are common threads from living in a monoracial world that weave their way into your life. This book explores ways for mixed and multiracial people to recognise how their identity has shaped their life\, handle common challenges\, and resist othering and erasure.Informed by experience and expertise from both sides of the therapist’s couch\, the Mixed + Multiracial Guide to Wellbeing shows you how to handle microaggressions\, confront systemic issues\, and control your own story. \n\n\n\nThe Mixed + Multiracial Guide to Wellbeing is a timely\, compassionate and quietly radical book that speaks to a fast-growing yet persistently overlooked readership.   \n\n\n\nReviews: \n\n\n\n‘Namalee Bolle successfully brings her readers into an impressive gathering of voices that give depth and breadth to the mixed and multiracial experience. This book invites us all to bring a deeper understanding to our own identities\, and the ways we find belonging and meaning in the world’ \n\n\n\nMarcia Bonato Warren MA MA LPC\, author of Movement and Identity: Multiculturalism\, Somatic Awareness\, and Embodied Code-Switching \n\n\n\n‘Bolle examines the complexities of mixed-race identity and confronts them with thoughtful\, tangible solutions. The Mixed + Multiracial Guide to Wellbeing is a relatable and fascinating read for anyone who’s ever fielded the question\, “What are you?” And essential for anyone who’s asked it’ \n\n\n\n Nabil Ayers\, author of My Life in the Sunshine \n\n\n\nOUR SPEAKERS: \n\n\n\nNamalee Bolle is a London-based multidisciplinary artist\, transpersonal transcultural integrative psychotherapist and award winning writer. She is British born of Sri-Lankan and Dutch-Jewish heritage and her work explores themes of multicultural identity\, intergenerational trauma and post-traumatic thriving. With a background as SUPERSUPER! magazine co-founder Namalee was featured in Pioneers: A Renaissance in South Asian Creativity at the British Maritime Museum. Her work has been published in The Guardian\, I-D\, Dazed\,The London Evening Standard\, Vogue and ShowSTUDIO. \n\n\n\nJassa Ahluwalia is a British actor\, writer\, filmmaker and trade unionist. Born in Coventry to a white English mum and a brown Punjabi dad\, he came to prominence as Rocky in the hit BBC Three series Some Girls\, followed by starring roles in Unforgotten\, Ripper Street\, and Peaky Blinders. Jassa created the hashtag #BothNotHalf to explore mixed identity in light of his own British-Indian heritage. His TEDx talk on How Language Shapes Identity has clocked up over 170k views and his BBC One documentary Am I English? won an Asian Media Award in 2022. His book Both Not Half: A Radical New Approach to Mixed Identity is out now from Bonnier Books. \n\n\n\nNamalee and Jassa will talk for around 45 minutes to 1hr followed by a Q&A with the audience. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-the-mixed-multiracial-guide-to-wellbeing-with-namalee-bolle/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,Feminist event,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/9781805013655.webp END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260305T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260305T203000 DTSTAMP:20260219T172209Z CREATED:20260211T135216Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260219T172209Z UID:75725-1772737200-1772742600@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: Frontierlands by Hazel Sheffield DESCRIPTION:‘Hazel Sheffield’s book is a warming remedy to the creeping nihilism many feel about the places where they live\,’ Jen Calleja \n\n\n\nWe are delighted to welcome Hazel Sheffield to the shop to discuss her inspiring new book about Britain’s abandoned and neglected places and the opportunities they present for communities\, and how they can help us face the challenges of climate change. \n\n\n\n‘Frontierlands’ are Britain’s forgotten places. Silt-filled harbours\, overgrown forests\, sunken railway tracks and empty buildings. All once economic engines\, now abandoned by investors and the state.But they are home to local communities\, and amongst them\, some remarkable pioneers working together to repair\, rebuild and prepare for the future.Hazel Sheffield takes her readers on a journey that begins at the coastline and travels inward via hoardings and railway arches\, factories\, streets and neighbourhoods to our homes. Moving from Watchet harbour in the South West to Gateshead in the North East\, from Lancashire to London and the South East\, she introduces us to the people who are acting to shape their own destinies – people with first-hand knowledge of the problems Britain faces and with clear ideas how to make things better.This is a book about regeneration\, reclaiming power\, and the hope that comes from community action. About people questioning how the world works and determined to do things differently in the face of economic upheaval and climate crisis. People learning to build a new world\, challenging us all to think about how we should live in the face of certain change. \n\n\n\nImmersive and inspiring\, Frontierlands challenges us to reconnect with and reclaim our environment\, showing that it is possible to regenerate\, reskill and create opportunities for industry\, and to address the challenges of climate change \n\n\n\nNadia Idle (Novara Media) will chair a discussion about the book for 45 minutes to an hour. The audience are invited to share their experiences. Hazel will be signing books after the event. \n\n\n\nHazell will speak about the book for around 45 minutes- 1hr followed by a q&a. She will be signing books after the event.As always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-frontierlands-by-hazel-sheffield/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/image0.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260205T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260205T203000 DTSTAMP:20260127T123947Z CREATED:20251117T181937Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T123947Z UID:73851-1770318000-1770323400@housmans.com SUMMARY:SOLD OUT! THE LOG BOOKS: VOICES OF QUEER BRITAIN AND THE HELPLINE THAT LISTENED with Tash Walker &Adam Zmith DESCRIPTION:please note this event is now sold out. To be added to a waiting list please email shop@housmans.com\n\n\n\n\n\nAn intimate history of LGBTQ+ life over four decades\, discovered in a stash of forgotten\, handwritten notes.\n\n\n\nSwitchboard was founded at Housmans\, and operated out of our premises for many years. So we are honored to start LGBT+ History Month by launching a book that covers an intimate part of Switchboard’s proud history and we look forward to welcoming its authors Tash Walker and Adam Zmith to the shop for an evening of discussion and celebration. \n\n\n\n‘A fantastic journey through an overlooked archive bursting with humanity and real life on every page.’ Dan Snow \n\n\n\nIn a crawlspace at the offices of Switchboard\, a queer helpline in operation since 1974\, lies dozens of log books kept by volunteers describing the phone calls they had taken: a teenager whose parents had kicked them out of their home for dressing as the wrong gender; a lesbian terrified of having her baby taken away from her; a man arrested for chatting up another man in a public toilet; a young person wanting to know how to come out. These logs were traces of tens of thousands of queer lives\, a bridge to a past hidden from people like Tash Walker and Adam Zmith in their youth\, captured by people who lent an ear to those in need. Walker and Zmith came of age in the time of Section 28\, a law which banned councils and schools ‘promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. In recovering these logs\, they encountered people grappling with feelings\, questions and problems both familiar and different. They set out to learn from – and sometimes speak to – people on both sides of the calls. Charged with joy\, gossip\, sensuality\, heartbreak and sometimes fear\, and with a potent relevancy to the world today\, Walker and Zmith have collected these stories in The Log Books. They capture queer lives in stunning detail\, embarking on a journey of both collective history and self -discovery\, propelling it into the foreground of our national history. \n\n\n\n‘Essential reading\, grounded in the past while also explaining the urgency of LGBTQ+ politics today.’TOM RASMUSSEN\, author of Diary of a Drag Queen \n\n\n\n‘Hauntingly beautiful\, this is a testament to the ongoing courage and care so profound in our community. I was enchanted at every page. Completely life – changing.’ DAN GLASS\, author of Queer Footprints \n\n\n\nOUR SPEAKERS: \n\n\n\nTash Walker is a writer\, podcast producer and community organiser who has worked with institutions such as the Barbican\, BBC\, and Queer Britain; they were a member of Switchboard’s board for eight years. \n\n\n\nAdam Zmith is a writer and multi-format producer; his book Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures won the Polari First Book Prize. He writes theatre shows\, talks and podcasts\, including Press Play Turn On which won Podcast of the Year at the British Podcast Awards 2024. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\nplease note this event is now sold out. To be added to a waiting list please email shop@housmans.com \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-the-log-books-voices-of-queer-britain-and-the-helpline-that-listened-with-tash-walker-adam-zmith/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event,Online event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Log-Books_cover.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251215T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251215T203000 DTSTAMP:20251215T155613Z CREATED:20251126T151629Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251215T155613Z UID:74133-1765825200-1765830600@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: JAW FILLER: Maz Murray & Charlie Markbreiter in conversation with So Mayer DESCRIPTION:Experimental trans neonoir fiction. \n\n\n\n‘Jaw Filler instantly joins the canon of outlier literature: jaw-dropper\, more like.’ \n\n\n\n– Isabel Waidner\, author of Sterling Karat Gold \n\n\n\nHousmans and Montez Press invites you to a conversation around the new neonoir novel Jaw Filler by Maz Murray & Charlie Markbreiter\, hosted by writer So Mayer. Tickets are free but booking is essential. \n\n\n\n‘You don’t need dysphoria to be trans. You don’t need a body at all.’ \n\n\n\nWhen Detective Sean Hastings is asked to investigate the disappearance of Character\, he enters the First Trans Commune in Sim World\, a virtual reality cult community imagineered by transfluencer Kevin\, and bankrolled by a mysterious tech company\, VSI. \n\n\n\nHaunted by the death of his cis gayguy college bestie and their shared diasporic dilemmas\, Taylor\, VSI’s token QTPOC face\, sees potential in Kevin’s ability to Release trauma into the virtual world. Meanwhile\, Casey\, Sean’s ex\, hopes Releasing will cure their Long Plague. Then femme fatale Mitchelle reappears. And the plot twists. \n\n\n\nA pulpy neo-noir romp through the anxiously assimilated transmasculine id\, Jaw Filler asks: who is VSI\, and what do they really want? Can you be your own dad? And if Character’s mind is trapped in Sim World\, then where is his body? \n\n\n\nPRAISE FOR JAW FILLER \n\n\n\n‘It’s like The Sluts meets Double Indemnity but everyone is trans. I had an absolute blast.’ \n\n\n\n – Macy Rodman \n\n\n\n‘With Jaw Filler\, Charlie Markbreiter and Maz Murray offer a searing\, noir-flavored lens into the world of terminally online guys and our insecurities\, fantasies\, and wild imaginations of ourselves and each other. I will be discussing this in therapy and billing Charlie and Maz for the expense.’ \n\n\n\n– James Tom \n\n\n\n‘There’s something faintly Brazil about Jaw Filler: wilful and breakneck\, self-aware yet never cynical\, paranoiac but always coyly – unarguably – plausible. Calling it a pastiche would be stupid. To do so would overlook not only the ravenous delight Jaw Filler takes in the melange of its genre conventions\, but also\, more importantly\, its surgical commitment to grounding a narrative in what I can only succinctly describe as genocide-reality. Murray & Markbreiter have achieved the extremely contemporary and impossible to falsify: true camp darkness.’ \n\n\n\n– Hesse K.\, author of Disquiet Drive \n\n\n\nOUR SPEAKERS \n\n\n\nMaz Murray is an artist who makes films\, writing\, performances and things. They had their first institutional solo show at Focal Point Gallery in 2024. He’s currently working on a collaborative performance\, PLOT HOLE\, developed while an awardee at Studio Voltaire. \n\n\n\nCharlie Markbreiter is the author of Rapid Onset: Anti-Trans Culture and U.S. Imperial Decline (Bloomsbury\, 2027) and Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella (2022). He is a PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center.  \n\n\n\nSo Mayer is a writer\, editor\, bookseller\, organiser and film curator. Their most recent book is Bad Language (Peninsula Press\, 2025)\, a memoir and manifesto on language and power.  \n\n\n\nTHIS IS A FREE EVENT. TICKETS CAN BE BOOKED HERE:\n\n\n\nhttps://www.outsavvy.com/event/31891/jaw-filler-in-conversation-maz-murray-charlie-markbreiter-with-so-mayer \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-jaw-filler-maz-murray-charlie-markbreiter-in-conversation-with-so-mayer/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Jaw-Filler-Cover_Sticker.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251206T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251206T203000 DTSTAMP:20251204T173148Z CREATED:20251125T114740Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251204T173148Z UID:74099-1765047600-1765053000@housmans.com SUMMARY:CANCELLED: A Short History of Queer Parenting with Kirsty Loehr DESCRIPTION:Kirsty Loehr’s first book A Short History of Queer Women\, a brilliantly written and incisive history of female same-sex desire was one of Housmans’ best-selling titles in 2024. So we are DELIGHTED that she’s back with another brilliantly written and incisive (and warm and funny!!) history\, this time of Queer Parenting! \n\n\n\nQueer families\, Kirsty argues\, have always existed. Even Sappho had a daughter named Cleis! For centuries\, the women of ‘The Golden Orchid Society’ in Qing-dynasty China were getting married and raising daughters together – platonically\, obviously… And Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson’s fabulously bisexual open marriage proved women really can have it all – a husband\, two kids\, a writing career and Virginia Woolf. Maybe you’re exploring your options. Maybe you don’t want kids but you have questions. Either way\, Kirsty Loehr provides another rollicking guide to the ups and downs of queer parenthood through the ages. \n\n\n\nDUE TO UNFORSEEN CIRCUMSTANCES THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. WE APOLOGISE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED. \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-a-short-history-of-queer-parenting-with-kirsty-loehr/ CATEGORIES:Feminist event,In Store,Literary Event,Online event END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251204T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251204T203000 DTSTAMP:20251029T175834Z CREATED:20251029T162604Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251029T175834Z UID:73249-1764874800-1764880200@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: SEA NOW: Eva Meijer in conversation with Lucy Mercer DESCRIPTION:event for an exciting Dutch writer supported by Arts Council England and New Dutch Writing.\n\n\n\n‘Sea Now joins Meijer’s rich oeuvre of novels and philosophical meditations on multispecies coexistence. One could read this novel as the story of two characters—the Netherlands and the sea—posing a question of each other: What am I? What and who is “the Netherlands”? What and who is “the sea”? The first question implicates uncomfortable stories of value: Who determines the status quo that decides who or what (a foreigner?\, a painting?) deserves to be saved\, who or what (a US-trained scientist?\, the Dutch language?) would count as a loss?’ \n\n\n\nMandy-Suzanne Wong\, Asymptote \n\n\n\n‘One of the unanticipated highlights of my reading year…a fabulist disaster novel\, doubling as identity-of-the-nation commentary…playful\, with a dry sly omniscient voice…a little bit as though Stephen Baxter’s Flood (2008) (or Japan Sinks) had been rewritten by Italo Calvino….the cumulative effect of this wide-ranging\, generous narrative attention is a constant sense of motion\, and a lightness of touch that allows Meijer to move smoothly from\, say\, haunting elegy to academic satire to a more serious intellectual point… Simply as a page-to-page reading experience\, Sea Now is consistently fresh and interesting: You never quite know where its eye will fall next.’ \n\n\n\nNiall Harrison\, Locus \n\n\n\nHousmans are very excited to welcome the celebrated writer\, philosopher\, and visual artist\, Eva Meijer to the shop to launch her novel Sea Now\, newly translated into English by Anne Thompson Melo. This work is a profound meditation on the relationship between the human and non-human and a biting satire of governmental ineptitude in the face of climate change. As the sea swallows a nation\, the prime minister holds a daily press conference and scientists try to find an explanation\, without success. A climate activist\, a young poet\, and an oceanographer journey across the new sea and return to confront all that has been lost\, as a coming-of-age adventure story is braided with a clarion call to wake up to the defining challenge of our age. Eva will be joined in conversation by the poet and academic Lucy Mercer\, author of Emblem (Prototype\, 2022) and Afterlife (forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo Editions.) The two will talk for around 45 minutes to 1 hour followed by an open discussion. \n\n\n\nOur Speakers \n\n\n\nEva Meijer is a philosopher\, visual artist\, writer and singer- songwriter. Their fiction and non-fiction has been translated into over twenty languages. Since the publication of their first novel in 2011\, their works have received numerous awards\, including the Halewijnprijs honouring their oeuvre. Meijer’s books have been met enthusiastically by the Dutch but also international press including reviews in the Guardian\, Der Spiegel and New York Review of Books. \n\n\n\nLucy Mercer‘s first collection Emblem (Prototype\, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her nonfiction essay on wax and mortality\, Afterlife\, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-sea-now-eva-meijer-in-conversation-with-lucy-mercer-2/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event,Online event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Sea-Now-Web-Cover-spine-1-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251126T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251126T210000 DTSTAMP:20251110T172426Z CREATED:20251110T172422Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251110T172426Z UID:73526-1764183600-1764190800@housmans.com SUMMARY:Housmans Poetry Series: Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain launches 'Grief is a Thing in Pleather' DESCRIPTION:Join us for another poetry evening\, this time in collaboration with our great friends Osmosis Press\, launching a new collection\, ‘Grief is a Thing in Pleather’\, from Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain. Prudence will be reading from the book alongside a host a fabulous guest readers (tbc). \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, but please RSVP below. Feel free to BYOB. \n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-poetry-series-prudence-bussey-chamberlain-launches-grief-is-a-thing-in-pleather/ CATEGORIES:Feminist event,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Poetry-Series-2.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251124T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251124T203000 DTSTAMP:20251118T172527Z CREATED:20250827T122307Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251118T172527Z UID:69711-1764010800-1764016200@housmans.com SUMMARY:SOLD OUT! The First Jasmines by Saima Begum DESCRIPTION:PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO A WAITING LIST PLEASE EMAIL SHOP@HOUSMANS.COM\n\n\n\nHousmans and Hajar Press are delighted to celebrate the launch of this important\, magnificent novel. Saima Begum’s The First Jasmines follows two sisters\, Lucky and Jamila\, after they are captured by the military while on the way to visit their mother in what was then called East Pakistan\, in 1971. \n\n\n\nLocked in a room in an unknown village-turned-camp by the river\, the women look through a lone barred window onto white jasmines blooming day and night. Meanwhile\, around the camp\, deadly guerrilla fighters from the Bengali Mukti Bahini gather to take back territory from the Pakistan Army. \n\n\n\nAs Bangladesh crowns painfully into the world\, Lucky and Jamila must choose between heartbreak and secrecy to return from an unspoken violence. \n\n\n\nWe are extremely lucky to have Saima Begum with us on the night\, joined in conversation by Shahnaz Ahsan. We anticipate this will be a popular event so please book ahead to avoid dissapointment. \n\n\n\nOUR SPEAKERS: \n\n\n\nSaima Begum is a British-Bangladeshi writer based in North London. She won the MFest Short Story Competition in 2021. The First Jasmines is her first novel. \n\n\n\nShahnaz Ahsan is an author\, columnist and award-winning food writer. ​Her latest book is The Jackfruit Chronicles: Memories and Recipes from a British-Bangladeshi Kitchen\, published by HarperNorth. Her debut novel Hashim & Family was an Observer Best Book of 2020 and was shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker Prize. ​ \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’\, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-the-first-jasmines-by-saima-begum/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The-First-Jasmines-RGB-300.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251119T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251119T203000 DTSTAMP:20251105T161023Z CREATED:20251023T134405Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251105T161023Z UID:72798-1763578800-1763584200@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: FERAL CLASS with Marc Garrett DESCRIPTION:Untamed\, Unheard\, Unstoppable… a moving memoir about being a working-class artist… Art on the Margins\, Life Without Permission \n\n\n\nFeral Class is Marc Garrett’s deeply personal and thought-provoking exploration of his early years\, chronicling his journey as a working-class artist navigating a world that often rejects them. Through humorous\, vivid storytelling and incisive critique\, Garrett explores how his upbringing shaped his identity\, forging a path that defied societal expectations. How can one survive\, let alone thrive\, as part of what Garrett describes as the feral class: a group of individuals who\, like him\, exist outside traditional institutions and thrive in the margins\, using resourcefulness and rebellion to carve out their own artistic spaces? \n\n\n\nWeaving together personal memories\, political reflections\, and the struggles of working-class artists\, Feral Class challenges the elitism of the art world. It celebrates the radical potential of those who refuse to conform. Garrett’s narrative is both an intimate self-portrait and a rallying cry for artists who refuse to be tamed. Passionate\, unfiltered\, and insightful\, this book is an essential read for anyone interested in the intersections of class\, creativity\, and resistance. \n\n\n\nBio: Marc Garrett’s life and work embody the intersection of art\, technology\, and social change\, shaped by his working-class upbringing and a commitment to challenging institutional hierarchies. Growing up in Southend-On-Sea\, he explored creative expression through street art\, pirate radio\, and early online activism before co-founding Furtherfield in 1996 with Ruth Catlow\, an artist-led community resisting the commercialisation of the art world. Despite personal challenges\, including a cancer diagnosis in 2022\, Garrett continues to focus on ideas and questions that acknowledge and engage working-class and feral-class contexts as a springboard for more extensive dialogues on creating conditions for social change across art\, technology\, and ecology. \n\n\n\nMarc will be joined in conversation with the imitable Cassie Thornton. Cassie is an artist and activist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown\, for disobedience\, and for unanticipated collectivity. She uses social practices including institutional critique\, insurgent architecture\, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification\, has hypnotized hedge fund managers\, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks\, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers\, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). Her 2020 book\, The Hologram: Feminist\, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future\, is available from Pluto Press. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please choose the ‘unwaged’ option. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’\, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-feral-class-with-mark-garrett/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,Discussion group,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2804f30f-229a-437f-9b9a-e584c707a3d4_800x1236-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251108T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251108T203000 DTSTAMP:20251103T134542Z CREATED:20250917T162720Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251103T134542Z UID:70436-1762628400-1762633800@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: Bourgeois Coldness: Henrike Kohpeiß in conversation with Lilly Markaki DESCRIPTION:Foregrounding affect\, this timely book provides an inestimable philosophical argument for the centrality of Blackness in critical examinations of capitalism’s violence.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nDenise Ferreira da Silva\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nElegant and erudite in equal measure\, this book will stand as a landmark diagnosis of the practices of denial in our time.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nAndreas Malm\n\n\n\nWe are delighted to welcome an incredibly exciting scholar\, Henrike Kohpeiß\, to the shop to launch the new English translation of her book Bourgeois Coldness. \n\n\n\n‘Bourgeois coldness’ refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bourgeois coldness is one of the most advanced affective and aesthetic forms of preserving the structure of the colonial status quo. It creates an affective shelter in the world\, unencroached upon by the immediate consequences of its many catastrophes. It functions like air conditioning – a complex technology which reliably stabilises the climate until those inside consider it natural. Bourgeois spaces – institutional and affective – stay cool and pleasant. But outside it’s burning.Canonical critical theory by Adorno and Horkheimer enters a dialogue with Black studies through Hartman and Moten. \n\n\n\nHenrike will be in conversation with Dr Lilly Markaki from Royal Holloway\, University of London. They’ll discuss the text and it’s key conceits for around 45 minutes-1hr\, followed by an open discussion. We look forward to seeing you there! \n\n\n\nOur Speakers: \n\n\n\nHenrike Kohpeiß is a philosopher in Berlin\, working on social and political philosophy\, critical theory\, affect studies\, Black studies and feminist philosophy. She regularly publishes work in academic journals and criticism in magazines. She organises and hosts events in Berlin\, such as the conversation series ‘Feelings at the end of the world’ at Volksbühne. Bourgeois Coldness is her first book\, and was published in German in 2023 by Campus Verlag. \n\n\n\nLilly Markaki is Lecturer in Race and Culture in Film and Media at Royal Holloway\, University of London. Bridging critical theory\, visual culture studies\, media theory\, and Black radical and anti-colonial thought\, their work investigates the relationship between aesthetics and politics\, exploring how insurgent practices—whether philosophical\, poetic\, or visual—can generate forms of solidarity that unsettle colonial-modern ontologies and anthropocentric logics. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please choose the ‘unwaged’ option. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’\, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/launch-bourgeois-coldness-with-henrike-kohpeis-divided-publishing/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BC_cover_web_v2.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251106T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251106T203000 DTSTAMP:20251015T141522Z CREATED:20251013T200720Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251015T141522Z UID:72034-1762455600-1762461000@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature with Alyssa Battistoni (in conversation with Helen Hester) DESCRIPTION:Housmans are very excited to welcome Dr Alyssa Battistoni to the shop to discuss her vital work of political theory\, Free Gifts: Capitalism and The Politics of Nature. Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world\, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts\, Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature\, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified\, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change\, she contends\, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. To help us do so\, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world\, and builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationship to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdown\, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light. \n\n\n\nBattistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought\, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry\, pollution in the environment\, reproductive labor in the household\, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing\, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers\, including Friedrich Hayek\, Simone de Beauvoir\, Garrett Hardin\, Silvia Federici\, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately\, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present\, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world\, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts. \n\n\n\nWe are delighted to also welcome to Housmans Professor Helen Hester\, author of\, among other brilliant titles\, shop favourite\, Xenofeminism\, to interview Alyssa. \n\n\n\nOUR SPEAKERS \n\n\n\nAlyssa Battistoni is assistant professor of political science at Barnard College. She is the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal. Her writing has appeared in The Nation\, The Guardian\, Boston Review\, n+1\, Dissent\, The New Statesman\, Jacobin\, and New Left Review. \n\n\n\nHelen Hester is Professor of Gender\, Technology and Cultural Politics at the University of West London. Her research interests include technofeminism\, social reproduction\, and theories of work\, and she’s a member of the international working group Laboria Cuboniks. Her books include Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (SUNY Press\, 2014)\, Xenofeminism (Polity\, 2018)\, and Post-Work (Bloomsbury). \n\n\n\nThe two will talk for around 45 minutes-1hr followed by an open discussion and book signing. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please choose the ‘unwaged’ option. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’\, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-free-gifts-capitalism-and-the-politics-of-nature-with-alyssa-battistoni-in-conversation-with-helen-hester/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,Discussion group,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/avif:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/9780691263465.avif END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251103T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251103T203000 DTSTAMP:20251015T150330Z CREATED:20251015T150327Z LAST-MODIFIED:20251015T150330Z UID:72483-1762196400-1762201800@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: WE ARE STILL HERE: STUDENT VOICES FROM GAZA DESCRIPTION:Housmans are honored to be hosting the launch event for this courageous book. \n\n\n\n We Are Still Here is an anthology of raw\, unfiltered\, and courageous voices featuring short and long stories\, poems\, essays\, and testimonies written by students from Gaza’s universities\, edited by Prof. Zahid Pranjol and Dr. Jacob Norris published by Daraja Press. Throughout the evening we host readings from Gazan students\, both via video recording and live in the shop\, followed by an open discussion with the book’s editor Zahid Pranjol. \n\n\n\nAlongside the book\, we will be selling Palestinian food\, tote bags and stickers that support local Palestinian businesses in London. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event. Please RSVP below. \n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-we-are-still-here-student-voices-from-gaza/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-5.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251023T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251023T220000 DTSTAMP:20250910T164200Z CREATED:20250910T164157Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250910T164200Z UID:70128-1761246000-1761256800@housmans.com SUMMARY:POETRY Imogen Cassels & Fintan Calpin DESCRIPTION:We’re extremely excited for the next Housmans poetry series featuring a double launch for two brilliant poets. We will have the frighteningly sharp\, inimitable Imogen Cassels launching her latest pamphlet\, Peach Machine (from The Last Books) and the terrifyingly brilliant\, irreplaceable Fintan Calpin launching his Terminal City (recently published by Veer2). \n\n\n\nTHIS IS A FREE EVENT. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BYOB. SEE YOU THERE! \n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/poetry-imogen-cassels-fintan-calpin/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/tickets-5.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251016T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251016T203000 DTSTAMP:20250910T165505Z CREATED:20250910T165440Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250910T165505Z UID:70135-1760641200-1760646600@housmans.com SUMMARY:the87press & Housmans Bookshop present: Hummingbirds 7.0\, a literary salon DESCRIPTION:Join the87press for a very special Hummingbirds event featuring Alia Al Ghussain and Rayya El Zein to celebrate the launch of Filling the Head: Listening to Rap in Arabic (Indiana University Press\, 2025). \n\n\n\nBased on ethnographic research in Ramallah (Palestine)\, Amman (Jordan)\, and Beirut (Lebanon)\, Filling the Head reveals how youths in these cities have maneuvered the challenges of making music while also navigating shifting geopolitical landscapes. Through these everyday experiences of being moved by music or ideas\, Rayya El Zein explores how ordinary patterns of motion and emotion provide a space for political engagement when spectacular political movements like protests\, strikes\, or revolutions feel far away\, forced\, or otherwise impossible. In contrast to existing narratives that equate rap with popular political resistance against oppressive regimes\, she argues instead for affective engagement through istifzaz―provocation or surprise―as well as yearning. Within this avant-garde genre\, there is no design to reach the masses with a political message; in fact\, as El Zein demonstrates\, the refusal of artists to confine their lyrical or musical experimentation to an ethos of resistance creates an aesthetic whose lack of singular politics defines it. \n\n\n\nHummingbirds is a literary salon curated by the87press aiming to hold space for authors and interlocutors to have conversations about recently published work. This iteration charts a new thread in that conversation which aims to bring academic publishing to a community audience. \n\n\n\nHost: Azad Ashim Sharma\, Founding Director of the87press. \n\n\n\nInterlocutor: Alia Al Ghussain \n\n\n\nAuthor: Rayya El Zein \n\n\n\nTICKETS CAN BE BOOKED HERE: \n\n\nRegister on EventbriteShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/the87press-housmans-bookshop-present-hummingbirds-7-0-a-literary-salon/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,Discussion group,Feminist event,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/1-2.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251015T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251015T203000 DTSTAMP:20250917T154708Z CREATED:20250910T153442Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250917T154708Z UID:70103-1760554800-1760560200@housmans.com SUMMARY:DOUBLE LAUNCH: Danny Hayward AND Matthew Goulish DESCRIPTION:Housmans and both are worse are delighted to be launching two new excellent essay collections\, Training Exercises by Danny Hayward and Kingfisher by Matthew Goulish. ‘both are worse‘ publish short prose books that make an engaging comment on the state of poetry and/or poetics\, stretches some horizons\, pushes out beyond an impasse\, heaps up obstructions\, or makes life more difficult or liveable in any way that seems compelling\, vital\, or beautiful. Studies of single authors\, histories of communities or forms\, manifestos\, treatises on metre\, philosophies of phonation\, provocations of every stripe and blotch\, dream diaries\, long jokes\, spreadsheets or inscrutable swirls of one-dimensional Venn diagrams are all possible: anything that works. \n\n\n\nABOUT THE BOOKS:\n\n\n\nDanny Hayward‘s Training Exercises:\n\n\n\n‘Organized violence committed on ordinary speech’ is therapy for those who don’t believe in literature as value. Training Exercises is an unpacking of that dictum: seven short essays\, letters\, reports and anti-biographies written to overcome the feeling of resistance to the defacement of what strikes us as true. An anti-purge written out by lipstick or hammer\, scrawled over the top of itself and run through a translation program that turns everything upside inside down\, its pieces include: a polemic against catharsis; a letter to the poet Dom Hale on his book Seizures; and a series of on-the-spot reports on the UK Illegal Migration Bill\, East London poetry readings\, the politics of the war in Ukraine\, and a conversation about the meaning of damage in contemporary literature. \n\n\n\n‘First you learn to write down your ideas\, then you learn again how to write all of your lurid political and intellectual and intimate disappointments and all of your childhood hopes over the top of them’. Jack Spicer scrawled the name of his book in pink lipstick on the cover of the academic journal he had published in: Training Exercises scrawls itself on top of that. \n\n\n\nDanny Hayward‘s most recent poetry collection is Loading Terminal (87 Press\, 2022). More recent work\, along with an earlier collection of critical essays\, can be accessed at Free Trials \n\n\n\nMatthew Goulish’s Kingfisher: \n\n\n\nThe dramaturg\, writer\, and teacher Matthew Goulish reflects on the practice of reading poetry\, of reading just one poem: ‘Kingfisher’ by Ed Roberson. How to attend\, to follow the course of poem as a waterway\, to recognise in its surface tension impending drops\, hidden obstacles\, and disguised turns? How also and at the same time to attend to an interruption – an accidental sighting – with equal curiosity? Sincerity follows the lines of the poem inside and outside\, inward and outward\, drawing in a series of correspondences and correspondents\, roots and sources\, until reading becomes a collective endeavor; the words of Ed Roberson\, Michelle Sherburne\, Renee Gladman\, and Lyn Hejinian are also here. As the subject of this particular poem surfaces\, to catch a glimpse is not so obviously a gift: the practice of catching sight might also be injurious to another’s freedom. And so we follow the trail of the poem through Smuggler’s Notch. \n\n\n\nAbout the author: Matthew Goulish co-founded Every house has a door in 2008 with Lin Hixson. He is dramaturg\, writer\, and sometimes performer with the company. He was a founding member of Goat Island\, the Chicago-based performance group that existed from 1987 to 2009. His books include 39 microlectures – in proximity of performance (Routledge\, 2001)\, The Brightest Thing in the World – 3 Lectures from the Institute of Failure (Green Lantern Press\, 2012)\, Work from Memory: In Response to In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust\, co-authored with Dan Beachy-Quick (Ahsahta Press\, 2012) and Pitch and Revelation—Reconfigurations of Reading\, Poetry\, and Philosophy through the Work of Jay Wright\, co-authored with Will Daddario (Punctum Books\, 2022). His essays have appeared in Richard Rezac Address (University of Chicago Press\, 2018)\, Propositions in the Making – Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (Rowman & Littlefield\, 2020)\, and many other journals and anthologies. He teaches in the Writing Program of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’\, your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/double-launch-danny-haywood-and-matthew-goulish/ CATEGORIES:Book Talk,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Untitled-design-3-edited.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20251011T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20251011T203000 DTSTAMP:20250917T161058Z CREATED:20250917T160800Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250917T161058Z UID:70424-1760209200-1760214600@housmans.com SUMMARY:ACTIVIST TALK: 'ALL HANDS ON DECK' with Jan Goodey DESCRIPTION:We welcome legendary activist Jan Goodey to the shop to help celebrate the launch of his essential new book All Hands On Deck: Climate Activism and the way ahead\, out now from PM Press. A member of Just Stop Oil\, and among those imprisoned for his climate actions\, Jan is a seasoned and courageous activist. For more than 30 years\, he has been on the front lines of direct-action environmentalism and anti-capitalism in the UK. Jan has helped shut down offensive companies and been part of successful protest camps to save Britain’s ancient woodlands. But\, as he argues in his new pamphlet\, it’s not enough. Climate breakdown continues unabated; the gap between haves and have-nots is growing. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event. Please book a free ticket below. You can also reserve a copy of the book\, or choose the ‘solidarity’ option to make a voluntary donation to Housmans. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/activist-talk-all-hands-on-deck-with-jan-goodey/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Copy-of-Glasgow.png END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR