In a last-minute change of plan, Bryan and I will now have a table in the Comics Marketplace at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Bowness next weekend. We’ll be selling artwork, prints and books, including copies of Bryan’s biography. I’ve no intention of being glued to the table all weekend, though. There’s a lot going on and I don’t want to miss it all. You can check out what’s on, guests, exhibitors and more on the website.

On Saturday 30th, we talk about our new book Armed with Madness, the Surreal Leonora Carrington, with Dr Harriett Earle in the Lake District Boat Club at 12 noon. See you there!

Our new book Armed with Madness: the Surreal Leonora Carrington will be published by Self Made Hero in the UK in mid May (25th April in USA). Bryan and I will be in London to talk about it at a public event at the Cartoon Museum on Friday 12th May at 6pm. Do come along if you can! Tickets are £10 and available from the Museum here. The following day we will be at a signing session in Gosh! from 1-2pm.

Later in the month we’ll be at a launch event hosted by Lancaster University at the Storey in Lancaster on 23rd May at 7.30pm. The event is free but ticketed via Eventbrite.

Meanwhile, check out the stunning trailer below (it’s less than 2 minutes long). It was directed and edited by designer Jordan Smith and features music composed by Gary Lloyd.

Jordan has collaborated with Bryan before, notably producing the cover to Alice in Sunderland, based on Bryan’s pencil rough. Gary, who in the past has worked on projects with Alan Moore and Iain Banks, composed the music for the modern dance performance piece When You Light a Candle You Also Cast a Shadow, featuring a specially commissioned poetry cycle that I wrote for them.

The trailer soundtrack includes the fine voice of soprano Isabelle Mohan and a specially recorded cameo by composer-musician Gary Carpenter playing the same Nordic Lyre that he used for Willow’s Song in the film The Wicker Man (1973). Amazing!

A two-minute trailer has been released to promote the new graphic biography by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot, Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington. Directed and edited by designer Jordan Smith, it features music composed by Gary Lloyd and is available to view on YouTube here.

Jordan has collaborated with Bryan before, notably producing the cover to Alice in Sunderland, based on Bryan’s pencil rough.

Gary, who in the past has worked on projects with Alan Moore and Iain Banks, composed the music for the modern dance performance piece When You Light a Candle You Also Cast a Shadow, featuring a poetry cycle written by Mary. The trailer soundtrack includes the fine voice of soprano Isabelle Mohan and a specially recorded cameo by composer-musician Gary Carpenter playing the same Nordic Lyre that he used for Willow’s Song in the film The Wicker Man (1973).

Reluctant muse and feminist champion… society heiress and rebel refugee… the last of the Surrealists: Leonora Carrington played many roles in her long and extraordinary life. Renouncing her privileged upbringing in pre-war England for the more exciting elite of Paris’s 1930s avant-garde, she comes to rub shoulders (and more) with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Salvador Dalí, after embarking on a complicated love affair with Max Ernst. But the demons that have both haunted and inspired her work are gathering, and when the world goes mad with the outbreak of war and the Nazi invasion, Leonora’s own hold on reality collapses into a terrifying psychotic episode of her own. Eventually fleeing war-torn Europe, she emerges into a new and richly creative life in Mexico City, establishing herself as a prodigious painter, writer, and advocate of women’s rights.

Armed With Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington is published in April in the USA and May in the UK by Self-Made Hero.

…with three more public performances! When You Light a Candle You Also Cast a Shadow was first performed in Lancaster’s Peter Scott Gallery in November 2021. This time it takes place in Chester Cathedral on Thursday 2nd March 2023, performed underneath Luke Jerram’s stunning Gaia installation (as seen in Lancaster Priory last June). Further details and tickets are available on Company Carpi’s website here. My poetry cycle will be there but, sadly, this time I won’t.

Our latest collaboration is on its way! And it’s looking fabulous. This forthcoming May, Armed with Madness: the Surreal Leonora Carrington comes out from our new publisher, Self Made Hero. You may have seen it in their Spring catalogue that appeared recently.

There’s going to be a launch event in Lancaster on Tuesday 23rd May 2023. It’s organised by Lancaster University and open to the public. I’ll be announcing further details of that and other launch events in due course.

I can’t wait!

We’re just back from a short trip to Paris and there was a surprise package waiting for me when we arrived home last night. In it were two copies of Language and Gender, 3rd edition, translated into Arabic and just published by Shahrayar Books, Iraq. I wasn’t expecting to see it until after the Cairo Book Fair in January.

I’ll make room on the shelf for it, next to the edition in simplified Chinese that came out nearly 20 years ago. I guess the book still has life in it yet!

This year, for the first time, the festival took place within the Lake District National Park. Located on the shore of Windermere, in Bowness, we had stunning views (sometimes!) of the surrounding mountains. We also had a good deal of mist, rain and rainbows. Another first for us this year was spending most of the busy weekend at a stall in the comics marketplace. Here are some photos, mostly inside the Lakeview (pictured above, from the grounds of our hotel) since that’s where the marketplace was situated.

Afterwards Bryan and I travelled down to Lancaster University, where we each did a talk for staff and students. Here are a couple of photos tweeted by @lancaster_words:

Readers of French out there may be interested in seeing a short article I did on Rain that was posted this morning on an environmentalist blog ANAB (Association Nature Alsace Bossue). Click here for the link. (1)

The website itself is well worth looking at, with an extensive archive that has a wealth of material in it on a wide range of topics.

The book’s still not out in French, unfortunately.

(1) I was asked to contribute to the blog by an old friend of mine, Sylvie Toll, who’s originally from Alsace. There seems to have been some confusion over who wrote the piece!