Search results for ""inkandescent""

Twenty-four-year-old Billy is beautiful and sexy. Albert—The Pharmacist—is a compelling but damaged older man, and a veteran of London’s late 90s club scene. After a chance meeting in the heart of the London’s East End, Billy is seduced into the sphere of Albert. An unconventional friendship develops, fuelled by Albert's queer narratives and an endless supply of narcotics. Alive with the twilight times between day and night, consciousness and unconsciousness, the foundations of Billy's life begin to irrevocably shift and crack, as he fast-tracks toward manhood. This story of lust, love and loss is homoerotic bildungsroman at its finest. 'At the heart of David's The Pharmacist is an oddly touching and bizarre love story, a modern day Harold and Maude set in the drugged-up world of pre-gentrification Shoreditch. The dialogue, especially, bristles with glorious life.' -JONATHAN KEMP, author of London Triptych "An exploration of love and loss in the deathly hallows of twenty-first century London. Justin David's prose is as sharp as a hypodermic needle. Unflinching, uncomfortable but always compelling, The Pharmacist finds the true meaning of love in the most unlikely places." -NEIL McKENNA, author of Fanny and Stella.

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Manhattan, 1963: weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, fresh-faced Raymond Wallace lands in the New York Times newsroom on a three-month bursary from Cambridge University. He soon discovers his elusive boss, Bukowski, is being covertly blackmailed by an estranged wife, and that he himself is to assist the straight-laced Doty on an article about the 'explosion of overt homosexuality' in the city. On an undercover assignment, a secret world is revealed to Raymond: a world in which he need no longer pretend to be something or someone he cannot be; a world in which he meets Joey. Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalisation. The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until—in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003—Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey. And the healing begins.

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Address Book is the new work of fiction by the Costa-shortlisted author of Skin Lane. Neil Bartlett's cycle of stories takes us to seven very different times and situations: from a new millennium civil partnership celebration to erotic obsession in a Victorian tenement, from a council-flat bedroom at the height of the AIDS crisis to a doctor's living-room in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, they lead us through decades of change to discover hope in the strangest of places. 'Bartlett is a pioneer on and off the page and we are lucky to have him telling our stories' DAMIAN BARR 'One of England's finest writers' EDMUND WHITE

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Few books ever become loved. Most linger on, undead—their sallow pages labyrinths of brittle stories and forgotten knowledge. And other things, besides… Paper-pale forms that rustle through their leaves. Ink-dark shapes swarming beneath faded type. And an invitation… Harris delights in collecting the unloved. He wonders if you’d care to donate. A small something for the odd, pale children. An old book, perchance? Neat is sweet; battered is better. Broken spine or torn binding, stained or scarred. And if you’ve left a little of yourself between the pages – a receipt or ticket, a mislaid letter, a scrawled number – that’s just perfect. He might call on you again. To hell and back again (and again) through Whitby, Scarborough and the Yorkshire Moors. Enjoy your Mobius-trip.

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When a gentleman called Joan lands up in a care home, Jim doesn't know what's hit him-everything about his new neighbour is triggering. And Joan is a colourful, combustible cocktail-ticking. Battle begins. May the best man win. But beneath antics and antique armour plating, what are both hiding? And maybe they just may be batting for the same team. An uproarious and uplifting romantic comedy about grey liberation.

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As a boy growing up in the Black Country—drained grey by Mrs Thatcher’s steely policies—Jamie dreams of escape to a magical metropolis where he can rub shoulders with the mythical creatures who inhabit the pages of his Smash Hits. Though his hometown is not without characters and Jamie’s life not without dramas—courtesy of a cast of West Midlands divas led by his mother, Gloria. Her one-liners are as colourful as the mohair cardies she carries off with the panache of a television landlady. We follow Jamie through secondary school, teenage troubles and away to art school; there he experiences the flush of first love with Billy, and the rush of the big city. But what then? Will he return to the safety of Welston, or risk everything on a new life in London? These flamboyantly funny stories of self-discovery, set against the shifting social scenery of the 80s and 90s, are for everybody who’s ever decided to be the person they are meant to be.

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This collection brings thirty authors in from the margins to occupy centre-page. Queer storytellers. Working class wordsmiths. Chroniclers of colour. Writers whose life experiences give unique perspectives on universal challenges, whose voices must be heard. And read. Emerging writers chosen from open-submission are placed alongside established authors— Aisha Phoenix, Alex Hopkins, Bidisha, Chris Simpson, DJ Connell, Elizabeth Baines, Gaylene Gould, Giselle Leeb, Golnoosh Nour, Hedy Hume, Iqbal Hussain, Jonathan Kemp, Julia Bell, Juliet Jacques, Justin David, Kathy Hoyle, Keith Jarrett, Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal, Lisa Goldman, Lui Sit, Nathan Evans, Neil Bartlett, Neil Lawrence, Neil McKenna, Ollie Charles, Padrika Tarrant, Paul McVeigh, Philip Ridley, Polis Loizou.

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Childhood polio has left Reggie Rainbow with a limp, but his strong arms and nimble fingers are perfect behind the scenes of down-at-heel variety theatres-where he helps illusionist Mr Brookes 'disappear' his glamorous assistants. When Mr Brookes accepts a booking at the Brighton Grand, Reggie finds himself in a strange new town. The seaside air works its own magic and the disappearance boy begins to wonder how much longer he can go on keeping secrets for a living...

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The Chelsea Hotel, New York, 1968. Nico, singer with The Velvet Underground, is waiting to shoot Andy Warhol's latest movie and for her lover, Jim Morrison, when her room is invaded by Valerie Solanas, radical feminist and would-be Warhol assassin. A duel to the death begins… 100 years since women got the vote, and 30 years since Valerie and Nico died, Wiseman reimagines two female pop culture icons at the epicentre of 60s cool battling for control of their own destinies.

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A gentleman called Joan lands in a subdued, suburban care home like a colourful, combustible cocktail. A veteran of Gay Lib, he dons battle dress and seeks an ally in the young, gay but disappointingly conventional care assistant Craig for his assault on the heteronormativity of the care system. Then, in this most unlikely of settings, Joan is offered love by a gentleman called Jim…

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Evans' debut, Threads—a collaboration with photographer Justin David also published by Inkandescent—was longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. His follow-up bears the watermarks of someone who’s swum life’s emotional spectrum. Some poems barely contain their righteous anger within visceral verse – 'The old are eating the young / in great Goya gobfuls'. Others, such as What the Cat Dragged Back, examine subtler sentiments: in response to your partner picking up a lover for you to share, for instance – 'I rub damp fur, wondering / which disco dustbin / you picked this one up in / and how best to dispose of him'. Short and (bitter)sweet, this is poetry for a mobile generation, poetry for sharing – often humorous and always honest about contemporary human experience. Exploring issues such as climate crisis, Brexit, gentrification and the rise of populist politics, these poems say more in a few lines than politicians say in volumes and offer an antidote to modern living.

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Kissing the Lizard is an evocatively set desert gothic―part creepy coming-of-age story, part macabre-comedy, set partly in buzzing 1990s London and partly in barren New Mexico wildlands. When Jamie meets Matthew in Soho, he’s drawn to his new-age charms. But when he follows his new friend across the planet to a remote earthship in Taos, bizarre incidents begin unfolding and Matthew’s real nature reveals itself: he’s a manipulative monster embroiled in a strange cult. And Jamie finds himself at the centre a disturbing psychological nightmare as they seize the opportunity to recruit a new member. Pushed to his limits, lost in a shifting sagebrush landscape, can Jamie trust anyone to help him? And will he ever see home again?

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If Alice landed in London not Wonderland this book might be the result—picture and word weft and warp to create an alchemic (rabbit) whole. On one page, the image of an alien costume—hanging surreally beside a school uniform on a washing line—accompanies a poem about fleeing suburbia. On another, a poem about seeking asylum accompanies the image of another 'alien' on an urban train. Woven through with themes of queerness and love, spun from heartfelt emotion and embroidered with humour, Threads will leave you aching with longing and laughter.

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Apart from herpes and Lulu - everything is eventually swept away Just one shimmering pearl of wisdom from popstar and polymath James Maker, whose worldly observations will (like herpes) once again be on everyone's lips thanks to his award-winning memoir, remastered with new chapters. If you hadn't heard of rock bands Raymonde or RPLA - fronted by James in the 80s and 90s - you might be forgiven for mistaking AutoFellatio for fiction. But here fact is more fantastical than any novel, as we follow our hero from Bermondsey enfant terrible to Valencian grande dame, a scenic journey that stops off variously at Morrissey confidant, dominatrix, singer, songwriter and occasional actor, and is literally littered with memorable bons mots and hilarious anecdotes that make you feel like you've hit the wedding-reception jackpot of being unexpectedly seated next to the groom's flamboyant uncle. According to Wikipedia, very few men can perform the act of autofellatio. We never discover whether James is one of them but certainly, as a storyteller, he is one in a million. WINNER OF THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2011 'Bloody Brilliant' JULIE BURCHILL 'Glitteringly epigrammatic, it's a glam-rock Naked Civil Servant in court shoes. But funnier. And tougher.' MARK SIMPSON 'Pistol sharp, loaded with witty one-liners and peppered with Maker's scatter gun observations on life, music and the meaning of good hair.' PAUL BURSTON

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