What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing: Johnny Payne & Monique Roffey online

Curated by Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing is an online international series virtually bringing together writers who might otherwise not get the chance to chew the fat.

Monique Roffey is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University and won the 2021 Costa Book of the Year with her sixth novel The Mermaid of Black Conch.

At the March event, Professors Johnny Payne and Monique Roffey will be reading from their work, comparing notes on their creative process, and talking about the highs and lows of the writing life. You’re invited to listen in via Microsoft Teams and the audience Q&A will give you the chance to ask the guest writers for their advice and opinions.

Monique Roffey is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University and won the 2021 Costa Book of the Year with her sixth novel The Mermaid of Black Conch. This – along with The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Archipelago and House of Ashes – is set in the Caribbean region, with which Monique has life-long and ongoing links, having been born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Drawing on family biography, history, academic research, witness testimony and contemporary life, most of her fiction contains an element of what Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier called lo real maravilloso: the marvellous real. Her 2011 memoir With the Kisses of his Mouth and 2017 novel The Tryst form a second body of work, which examines female sexuality. Her latest book, Sun Dog, came out in January 2022.

Johnny Payne is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at Mount St Mary’s University, Los Angeles, and teaches Novel Writing, Playwriting and Poetics. His novels include Confessions of a Gentleman Killer and The Hard Side of the River; recent plays include Los Feliz, Touchstone and Cannibals. Johnny has published two books of poetry, most recently Funeral Playlist, and his collection of essays, The Reluctant Assassin, under his nom de plume Étienne D’Abattoir, was published in 2021. He is working on a book of short stories, Fish Head, plus an ethnographic study of dance, ritual and storytelling in contemporary Peru.