September Shindig!

The latest Nine Arches Press and Crystal Clear Creators Leicester Shindig takes place at The Western, Western Road, Leicester LE3 0GA, on Monday from 7.30pm.

As usual entry is free and there'll be plenty of open mic slots - just sign up on the door if you'd like to read.

Guest readers are Sarah James, Lydia Towsey, Deborah Tyler-Bennett and Martin Malone. Deborah and Lydia will be familiar faces to East Midlands audiences – Deborah's publications include Pavilion (Smokestack, 2010), Revudeville (King's England, 2011) and her most recent, Turned Out Nice Again: Stories Inspired by the Music Hall Tradition (King’s England, 2013), while Lydia is a poet and performer who has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and is currently working to organise a tour of her one woman show, The Venus Papers. She's also Chair and Compere of WORD!, the longest running spoken word night in the Midlands, held monthly in Leicester.

Sarah James is a poet, short fiction writer and former journalist. Her first collection Into the Yell (Circaidy Gregory Press, 2010) won third prize in the International Rubery Book Awards 2011. Sarah's second collection Be[yond], published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, is officially launched this week.

Martin Malone was born in West Hartlepool, and now lives in Warwickshire. A winner of the 2011 Straid Poetry Award and the 2012 Mirehouse Prize, his first full collection - The Waiting Hillside - is published by Templar Poetry. Currently studying for a PhD in poetry at Sheffield University, he edits The Interpreter’s House poetry journal. He also has a taste for 1980s Australian indie bands so frighteningly similar to my own that you'd think we'd been raised together in a Perth commune.