The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head book signing at Travelling Man

Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor

Visit now

The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head book signing

Travelling Man, Manchester
28 April 2018

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

Artist Dan Berry and writer David Gaffney.
Book now

To mark the release onto the world of their first graphic novel collaboration (a second is in the pipeline), Eisner-nominated cartoonist Dan Berry and Manchester-based micro-fiction writer and novelist David Gaffney will be chatting about The Three Rooms in Valerie’s Head and signing copies of the book, out now with US publishers Topshelf.

A dark comedy about “love, loneliness, accumulating baggage, and letting go”, The Three Rooms in Valerie’s Head has been garnering praise from all quarters since its launch in London earlier this spring. It tells the tales, various, of Valerie’s serially unlucky love life, thanks, mostly, to a conveyor belt of socially malfunctioning, weirdly obsessed boyfriends – who end up filed in the memory box marked “cellar” and who are retrieved back upstairs into the light every now and again so that Valerie can find out what went wrong in order to not mess up her future relationships.

The Comicon reviewers call it: “A wonderfully offbeat, dark comedic delight… The turn of Gaffney’s phrase, and the skillful use of expression and flow in Berry’s art, perfectly capture both the surreal ridiculousness of it all and the sadness that underpins the tale”, while purveyors of fine comic books Forbidden Planet have described it as: “Funny, poignant, surreal and still warmly emotional and human – a delight to read.”

Pop along to this special book signing to find out more about this unusual pairing of words and pictures, which started taking shape as a live performance project for the Lakes International Comic Arts Festival back in 2015.

Where to go near The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head book signing at Travelling Man

Image of Night and Day Cafe in Manchester
Manchester
Music venue
Night & Day Cafe

Opened in 1991, Night & Day Cafe on Oldham Street plays host to an exhausting array of gigs throughout the year.

Foundation Coffee House Manchester
Manchester
Café or Coffee Shop
Foundation Coffee House

An echoey, spacious coffee house in the northern quarter, filled with designer furniture, a meeting room on wheels and carefully-crafted brews.

Manchester
Shop
Vinyl Exchange

Vinyl Exchange is the largest seller and buyer of rare and second-hand records, CDs and DVDs in the North West.

Image of Piccadilly Records on Manchester's Oldham Street
Manchester
Shop
Piccadilly Records

Piccadilly Records is the real deal, a record shop so good that it probably deserves some credit for the regeneration of its surrounding neighbourhood.

The seats in Three Minute Theatre.
Manchester
Theatre
Three Minute Theatre

The only purpose-built Vintage recycled indie theatre in Manchester’s City Centre. Now mother to Manchester Shakespeare Company thriving in Afflecks consortium of bohemia.

Manchester
Shop
COW Vintage Manchester

COW Vintage, once on Piccadilly Place, now on Church Street in Manchester’s Northern Quarter is a beautifully decorated vintage clothes shop.

What's on: Literature

Cover of a book with a canal boat on it saying boater by Jo Bell
LiteratureManchester
Jo Bell at The Portico Library

Poet and now memoirist Jo Bell invites you to join her “for a friendly evening” at The Portico Library when she’ll be talking about her new “smart, funny” memoir Boater.

From £6.00
Culain Wood
LiteratureManchester
Crooked Poets at the Crooked Man

Hosted by John Darwin, Crooked Poets is a monthly spoken word night at the Crooked Man bar in Prestwich, featuring a special guest and open mic.

Free entry
LiteratureWest Yorkshire
Poetry at the Dusty Miller

Poetry at the Dusty Miller is a now regular night with invited readers, organised by poets Carola Luther and Ian Humphreys in the Coiners’ Room in the Mytholmroyd pub.

Free entry

Culture Guides

Theatre in Manchester and the North.
Theatre in the North

From outdoor shows to drama in the dark, our theatre guide celebrates genre-pushing work, new writing and contemporary performance.

Author portrait
Literature Events in the North

Our latest round-up features plenty of one-off live literature events to wrap your ears about, so get those diaries ticking over...

Two women stand next to an orange car.
Cinema in the North

August brings a huge LGBTQ+ film festival, plus a reggae classic and a spotlight on Japanese animation.

Blondshell by Hannah Bon.
Music in the North

From Lyra Pramuk’s sacred synths to the sugar rush of YAANG, our latest music picks bring ritual, rebellion and ridiculous levels of fun.