Peter Rosser & Jennifer Johnston. Wednesday 25 March, 8.00pm

No Alibis Bookshop, 3 Botanic Avenue

Part of Between The Lines 2009

Peter Rosser 

Peter Rosser is a Belfast-based composer and music journalist. His music has been performed at the Belfast Festival at Queen’s, the Sonorities Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the Spitalfield’s Festival in London. His short ten minute composition, Pied, for voice and cello will draw together quotations from Amergin’s ancient poems to Jennifer Johnston’s contemporary novels with soprano Aoife Miskelly.

Jennifer Johnston 

Born in Dublin in 1930, Jennifer Johnston’s first published novel was The Captains and the Kings (1972). Since then, she has published many highly acclaimed novels, including Shadows on our Skin (1977), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Old Jest (1979), set in the War of Independence which won the Whitbread Award. The Old Jest was later filmed as The Dawning, starring Anthony Hopkins. Other novels include: How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974), set in World War I, and later adapted for stage; The Invisible Worm (1991), dealing with the subject of sexual abuse, and shortlisted for the Daily Express Best Book of the Year Award; The Gingerbread Woman (2000), about a widower who has lost his wife and child to terrorists; This Is Not a Novel (2002); Grace and Truth (2005); and recently, Foolish Mortals (2007). Jennifer Johnston also writes plays. These have included The Nightingale and Not the Lark (1980), and O Ananias, Azarias and Misael (first published in Best Radio Plays of 1989, 1990). Jennifer Johnston lives in County Derry, is a member of Aosdána and her novels have been published in many countries. ‘She has created a world of her own,’ writes Derek Mahon, ‘of such material is the finest literature made’.

Tweet