No Matter #2 at The Castle

A warm welcome back to No Matter, settling nicely into the bi-monthly slot at The Castle vacated by The Other Room with a second outing organised by the women-led team Jazz Linklater, Nell Osborne, NJ Stallard and Hilary White. Following a successful and packed launch event in June, combining wordage and drumming, this time round the three readers are Sarah Bernstein, Carl Gent and Linda Stupart, all visiting Manchester from as far flung places as Cape Town and Canada (via Edinburgh).

Originally from Montreal, Sarah Bernstein is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. Her creative writing has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and has appeared in places like Adjacent Pineapple, tender, Contemporary Women’s Writing and Lemon Hound. Her first collection, Now Comes the Lightning, was published in Canada by Pedlar Press in 2015 and she has most recently been working on a novel, The Coming Bad Days.

Having exhibited at London’s V22 Silvertown Studios and De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea-based Carl Gent is a sculptor and installation artist, print and performance writer, and musician, performing as one-half of amplified sitar and drum duo Perple Celotape.

Another visual artist, and educator, working with Tate Schools and Teachers on an in-schools resource using art to talk about gender, Linda Stupart hails from Cape Town in South Africa and published debut speculative feminist fiction-themed novella Virus with London-based Arcadia Missa Press in 2016. The blurb says something about ‘tentacle sex’, so, you know, be prepared to adjust your mindset if necessary.