Steve_Bamlett_blog

Manchester is not a favourite city of mine to visit, although in part this is because I have worked so hard to neutralise its effects on me as past blogs on visits contingent on some great art events have testified (no links to these though). Hence, to visit it again seems hard to think about. However, not long ago I discovered not only that a novelist I like very much was publishing a new novel, entitled Palaver (its UK edition out in January 2026) but that he was visiting Manchester Waterstones to talk about it. The novelist is Bryan Washington, who represents a kind of development of queer Black writing that is not much evidenced in the UK – international and other-boundary breaking writing that achieves that with grace, style and a kind of expectation of proliferating new norms, and unchallenged belief in their right to prevail.

It is Washington that made the trip inevitable. I have procured a copy of Palaver (of course I had to seek out the American first hardback edition because the UK one is not out yet) but have only started to read it last night – though loving it already and already finding its developmental markers in the writing that Ocean Vuong speaks about in his book blurb. But of that more to come once I have read it. I read Memorial, his debut novel (there was a set of stories, Lot, before) and was drawn into the continent and genre (including photography as narrative – a continuing feature of the writing) hopping story, the attempt to re-envision family, and especially through the rituals gateways of food preparation and eating – but absolutely blown away by the development of these ideas in the brilliant Family Meal, which I inadequately blogged upon (there is a link to the blog here). Moreover, Washington is introduced by a wonderful novelist in Manchester, Tawseef Khan (see my blog on his debut novel, Determinations, here).

But now there is another Washington novel and being a book collector and a quality queer fiction fan I want all three signed by him. 

He is, after all, someone who is a kind of writing hero – a gloriously out one in ways not yet achieved in British writing, which always feels as if it must excuse its push-back against the barriers of queer life development, although, perhaps, Andrew McMillan comes some way to wards breaking that in his novel Pity (see blog here). So this is why I go – more on Washington when I preview the event with some thoughts about the reading of it just started.

January 22nd seems a long way away but a day trip by train (I am just hoping Cross-Pennine Train services are better than they used to be) meant that I would not be able to get back the same night, since my ticket for the Washington event is for 8 – 9.30 p.m. Staying over and the additional expense of that made me think I need to get more out of the day I arrive (I now find I have to get back by lunch on Friday at the latest for my husband has some day laser surgery on his eyes – indeed had I been aware of this I would not have booked for this I think. But I did and now we both want me to go).

I searched and found something worthwhile, the matinee production of a visiting USA production of Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation play of To Kill A Mocking Bird at The Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays. Now I have a shameful secret in my life. I had to this point never read that book, even though I have seen the film starring Gregory Peck. The latter hadn’t urged me to read it but it weighed like shame on me that I hadn’t. I have now put that right. It is the masterwork one expected though of course a problematic picture of tolerance of white racism – whatever its intention and best moments. Atticus Finch is possibly the most problematic hero of any novel, to say nothing of the problematic handling of the man Tom Robinson, falsely accused of rape of a white young woman. But I will blog in preparation for going later, with some ideas preparatory to seeing this USA lauded production.

It is a day I cannot wait to happen now. More preparatory blogs to come then. I need to re-see the Gregory Peck film first.

With love

Steven xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx