Wed 17 October 2018
University of Sussex
4-5.30pm, Room 115, Jubilee Building

We are proud to present Clare Best and her new memoir The Missing List. Clare Best has been haunted all her life by dark family secrets. When she agreed to help her dying father record his memoir, she embarked on an urgent quest for the truth. This brought particular ethical and aesthetic challenges, weaving together her father’s words, his ciné-film footage, her own journal entries and scraps of childhood memory.

Clare’s reading will be followed by a presentation from Professor Lyn Thomas, curator of Life Writing Projects, which publishes creative and experimental representations of lived experience. Contributions have also been invited from Dr Nirmal Puwar, (TBC) whose ‘Walking Through Litter’ has re-ignited local activism for civic care  in Coventry as it prepares to become City of Culture in 2021, and Jenni Cresswell, who will present her new collaboration with Lyn ‘The Black Beaded Dress’. LWP also includes Clare’s multi-media Breastless and excerpts from Lyn’s Clothes Pegs, in which stories of class and gender identity are ‘pegged’ onto items of clothing.

Together, we will debate questions of perspective, identity and art central to the task of life narration in any media, as well as the challenge of finding truth in an age when it is arguably threatened, paradoxically, by ‘truthiness’.

There will be time for questions and discussion, followed by wine, soft drinks and nibbles till 6.30pm.

ALL WELCOME; DISABLED ACCESS. FREE EVENT; NO NEED TO BOOK.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/directions

This event is jointly organised by the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research and the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex It is supported by the John Smith Bookshop and open access publisher REFRAME.

For further information, please contact Margaretta Jolly m.jolly@sussex.ac.uk