playforth News, Readings

Vanessa Gebbie (prose), Oliver Marlow (poetry), and Sue Roe (prose) – Thursday 12 June

Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 12th June 2025, featuring Vanessa Gebbie (prose), Oliver Marlow (poetry), and Sue Roe (prose). Our previously scheduled fourth reader Jean Atkin is unfortunately unable to join us, but will be reading at a future event instead.

This will be a LIVE event at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes (upstairs room): doors 6pm for a 6.30pm start.

Tickets £5 (£3 students/unwaged and claiming benefit) available on the door. 

Books will be for sale on the night (cash only please).

Vanessa Gebbie is author of a growing number of diverse books including one novel, five collections of short form fictions, two poetry collections and two guidebooks for writers. Her latest fiction publication is a translation into German of her illustrated novella in flash, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures. Her latest guidebook for writers is 51 and a half Games and Ideas for Writers (Ad Hoc Books, 2023). She is a freelance creative writing tutor, editor, facilitator and mentor, working closely with Curtis Brown Creative and the Arvon Foundation.  Her writing has been used in iGCSE papers, is on the curriculum in USA, has been commissioned by BBC Radio, for anthologies, and is translated into several languages. Her work has been supported by the Arts Council, by residencies at Gladstone’s Library and Petersfield Museum in the UK, Anam Cara Writers and Artists’ Retreat in Ireland, and a Hawthornden Fellowship. www.vanessagebbie.com

Early in his writing career Michael Schmidt selected Oliver Marlow’s work for ‘New Poetries II’, an international anthology of new writing published by Carcanet Press. His work has been published in four other anthologies and over twenty literary magazines including Agenda, PN Review, Poetry London, Poetry Salzburg Review, Scintilla and The North. His poems have been set to music and performed in venues including Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, and he has given readings of his work on BBC Radio, as well as more recently in Brighton and London. Earlier this year his submission of a debut collection was highly commended in a national competition run by Indigo Dreams Publishing. Prior to becoming a teacher he held various jobs, including being the Andrex puppy back in the nineties. He currently teaches in Eastbourne, and he and his wife Sarah consider Lewes their second home – because it’s just so civilized!

Sue Roe is the author of fiction, poetry, and is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of biography. Her five acclaimed biographies: Gwen John: A Life, The Private Lives of the Impressionists, In Montmartre, In Montparnasse, and her latest (published in March 2025), Hidden Portraits: The Untold Stories of Six Women Who Loved Picasso. She has taught at the Universities of East Anglia and Sussex and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Sussex from 2017 to 2020. Hidden Portraits interweaves the stories of the women who all had significant relationships with Picasso, including Olga Khokhlova, the Ballet Russe dancer, Dora Maar, the successful photographer, and Francoise Gilot, the painter. Sue lives in Brighton.

playforth News, Readings

Sue Roe (prose), Christopher Horton (poetry), and Matt Birch (hybrid) – Thursday 13th April

Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 13th April 2023, featuring Sue Roe (prose), Christopher Horton (poetry) and Matt Birch (hybrid).

This will be a LIVE event at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes (upstairs room): doors 6pm for a 6.30pm start.

Tickets £5 (£3 students/unwaged and claiming benefit) available on the door. 

Books will be for sale on the night (cash only please).

Sue Roe

Sue Roe’s first published book was a novel, Estella, Her Expectations, after which she turned her attention to non-fiction – a critical book on Virginia Woolf, followed by her Penguin Modern Classics edition of Woolf’s third novel, Jacob’s Room. She has published four biographies of artists: Gwen John: A Life (Chatto); and The Private Lives of the Impressionists (also published in the UK by Chatto, and in nine other countries). Her next two books were published by Penguin – both were read on BBC Radio 4’s Book of the week – In Montparnasse; and In Montmartre, which made both the Sunday Times and the New York Times best seller lists. While pursuing her career as a biographer (her forthcoming book is a biography), Sue has also published two poetry pamphlets, The Spitfire Factory and The Magpie; and she has recently completed a novel.

Christopher Horton

Christopher Horton’s poems have appeared in The Spectator, The North, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Ambit, Iota, Magma, Stand, and in anthologies with Penned in the Margins, Broken Sleep Books, tall-lighthouse and Days of Roses. He was a prize winner in the National Poetry Competition and the Bridport Prize. He won first prize in the South Downs Poetry Festival Competition in 2021 and had another poem highly commended in the same year of the competition. He was also commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition twice, Highly Commended in the Walter Swan Award and shortlisted for the Canterbury Festival Poetry of the Year Competition. He has written poetry reviews for the London Magazine and Poetry London. His pamphlet, Perfect Timing, was released by tall-lighthouse press in 2021. 

Matt Birch

Matt Birch has run Skylark, a small bookshop and gallery in The Needlemakers, since 2006. In creative terms, he has had two exhibitions of his photography, in IO, Brighton and The Foundry Gallery, Lewes.  He is also a songwriter and keyboardist with the band IBEX. He will read from Meridian: A Walk From Sussex to Yorkshire, his first book, published by The Frogmore Press. In July 2021, he set out to walk along the Greenwich Meridian, a route determined by an abstract concept rather than natural features and completed in stages over four seasons. Reflecting the rhythm of a long walk, his colour photographs of the Weald, London, the Fens and Lincolnshire Wolds, are matched with short pieces of writing: writing that meanders through history, politics, nature, literature, music, etymology, prose and poetry. A personal and whimsical exploration of the places encountered between two little-known coastal towns.     

rhneedles News, Readings

Ruth Valentine, Sue Roe and Stephen Plaice & Martyn Ford – June 14, 2018

Our next event is on Thursday 14th June 2018, upstairs at the John Harvey Tavern, Bear Yard, Cliffe High St, Lewes BN7 2AN.

Interested in coming to Poetry Surgeries in the afternoon? 
Full details here...

Our evening readings will be preceded by a special Poetry Open Mic, as part of the South Downs Poetry Festival.

Doors open 6.30pm, the Open Mic starts at 6.45pm, with the main readings at 8pm.

Tickets £5 (£3 students, and the unwaged and claiming benefit) at the door on the night. This includes entry to both the readings and the Open Mic.

Readers: Ruth Valentine (Poetry), Sue Roe (Prose) and Stephen Plaice & Martyn Ford (poetry)

Ruth Valentine

Ruth Valentine‘s latest publications are Downpour (Smokestack, 2016) and Rubaiyat for the Martyrs of Two Wars (Hercules Editions, 2017).  Last year she also self-published a pamphlet, A Grenfell Alphabet, and sold it in aid of the Grenfell fund.  She’s  written a novel, The Jeweller’s Skin (Cybermouse 2014) and several works of non-fiction.  She lives in Tottenham, and campaigns for the rights of migrants and refugees.

Sue Roe

Sue Roe’s latest biography, about artists in twentieth-century Paris, will be published by Penguin at the end of June. Her previous books include In Montmartre; The Private Lives of the Impressionists; and Gwen John : A Life, as well as two books of poetry, The Magpie and The Spitfire Factory; and a novel, Estella, Her Expectations. She is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Sussex.

Stephen Plaice & Martyn Ford

Martyn Ford is a teacher, writer and illustrator, living in Brighton. Vanishing Point, his selected poems, is published by Parvenu Press.

Stephen Plaice lives in Sussex, the heart of his poetry.  Those Under Saturn, his selected poems,  also appears with Parvenu Press. He is currently Professor of Dramatic Writing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

In 2016 Stephen and Martyn published an anthology of the work of the Fonthill Poets, of which they were core members.