Richard Cabut and Cathi Unsworth in conversation with Ann Scanlon about their new books: Looking for a Kiss (PC-Press) and Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth (Nine Eight Books).
Doors: 7pm
Booking required via the link below
Join Richard Cabut and Cathi Unsworth to celebrate the launches of their respective new books, Looking For A Kiss (PC-Press, 2023) and Season of the Witch: The book Of Goth (Nine Eight Books, 2023). Cabut and Unsworth will be in conversation discussing their work, and copies of the book will be available for purchase on the night.
Looking for a Kiss is the post-punk classic novel….. A drug-fuelled beat/punk, love/hate story…… Like a bitter sweet John Coltrane solo crashing into Einstürzende Neubauten….. whilst immersing themselves in drugs, sex, magic, chaos and the post-punk music of the time our protagonists Robert and Marlene struggle to find themselves and their lives in Camden, London, England….. Books like Looking for a Kiss are a flare in the dark.
This special extended and amended edition of Looking For A Kiss features new text, photos and artwork. There are introductions by brilliant Jeff Young (Ghost Town, Eastenders, Holby City), Cathi Unsworth (Seasons of the Witch), non-fiction pieces about the novel’s punk, positive punk and post-punk background, as well as further original diary entries, etc.
“Totally fabulous and restores my belief in brilliant, subversive subcultures books still being the active source of our imaginative capital. It’s superb in its occupation of alternative realities. An absolute marvel and the writing is just fantastic. Post-cool invites post-punk in the drenched lysergic prism of a novel of addictive transgressions redeemed throughout by the lyrical arc of a prose that elicits lost futures in the defiant present. With Camden as its subcultures locative, and its green canal the novel’s pineal gland, Robert and Marlene alienated and unknowable to each other in altered states witness each other’s blurred emotions with a philosophic acuity that both stings and leaves astute marks on their dystopian histories…… A brilliant, upending book in which ‘Punk was, in effect, a way of stopping your past from becoming your future.”
-Jeremy Reed, author and poet.
The paperback and hardback versions will be distributed to shops internationally, and will also be available worldwide via online outlets. Pre-sale details at www.pc-press.co.uk
Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch: The book Of Goth charts the rise and influence of Gothic music during the Eighties as a reaction to the profound social change wrought by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Spawned by punk, bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and The Cure were the architects of a new music that distilled the darkness of the times. Shaped by the politics of an era – from the Cold War, the Miners’ Strike, privatisation, The Troubles and AIDS – its gender fluid, outlaw imagery and innovative, atmospheric music spoke to a generation of alienated youth. By the time Thatcher left office in 1990, Goth had imprinted its will on the cultural landscape as deeply as the Iron Lady herself. Written by Cathi Unsworth, a lifelong Goth, teenage music journalist, acclaimed crime writer and biographer of punk icon Jordan, SEASON OF THE WITCH is a personal and social history of an enduring counter-culture, one that steadfastly refuses to give up the ghost.
Follow this link to pre-order Cathi’s book