The Unreliable Reader

On Tuesday 15th October 2013, I presented my work ‘The Unreliable Reader’, as part of an event entitled Reading as Art: Turning the Pages of Psychology. This took place at the Senate House Library in London as it was part of the 2013 Bloomsbury Festival.

Dr Sharon Kivland and Mura Gosh, curators of the event, wrote:

Evoking a wind that blows through a library, opening books, prompting unexpected stories, this evening of readings, art, and performances engages with Victorian psychology from the library’s collections.

Other artists and writer in the event include: Debbie Booth, Kate Briggs, Jan Campbell, Jamie Crewe, Vincent Dachy & Bridget MacDonald, Karen David, Annabel Frearson, Rachel Garfield & Janet Hodgson, Chris Gibson, Jane Harris, Peter Jaeger, Kreider + O’Leary & Paul Bavister, Catherine Linton, Hayley Lock, Sophie Loss, John McDowall, Forbes Morlock, Hester Reeve, Naomi Segal, Sarah Sparkes, Holly Stevenson, Julie Westerman, Sarah Wood, Gillian Wylde

You can download the full programme here.

If you want to engage with words from books in the Senate House library collection, I am offering to read to you, one-to-one. I have chosen narratives, novels from the nineteenth century, and I will do all the work. You just need to listen, and to decide when to leave. Will you trust me? I am, like the characters I voice, unreliable. I may embellish, or mutilate the text. I certainly have a foreign accent and, sometimes, I mispronounce words.