Following sell-out book events in Liverpool, New York, Boston, Sheffield, and Suffolk, the Wild Dances book tour is headed to Brighton!
Please join our editor William Lee Adams at Waterstones bookshop (71-74 North St.) on September 21 at 19:00. He’ll be in conversation with Matthew Todd, the author of Straight Jacket and the former editor of ATTITUDE magazine. As ever, we’ll open with a brief reading, followed by an interview and Q&A.
Owing to demand, you’ll need to RSVP in advance via the Waterstones web site. Tickets are £5.
Book talk: Wild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision
Although the book ends up at Eurovision, it’s more about the journey and how our backgrounds can shape our passions — and how those passions can ultimately nourish us. The book discusses issues from growing up with a disabled sibling to coming out in the Deep South to the traumatic aftermath of violence and death to the power of pop music to help us heal and forgive.
Nigella Lawson, the television cook and a former judge of The Booker Prize, described “Wild Dances” as “breath-taking and beautifully written,” explaining that it is “about so much more than Eurovision.”
Writing for National Public Radio in the U.S., literary critic Thúy Đinh called it “a page-turning, tragicomic memoir.”
“By ingeniously weaving improbable and conflicting forces that make up his personal history, Adams affirms a resilient idea of home that yearns to transcend space and time.”
You can hear a bit more about the topics covered on the BBC World Service podcast “Lives Less Ordinary.” Part 1 of the two-part episode “The invisible child who now shines at Eurovision” is available on Apple, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts.
Wild Dances: My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision is available now. The 12-hour audiobook will be released on September 26 and available wherever you get your audiobooks.
