TONIGHT: Poetry in Newcastle, 8pm

Venue: Bridge Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne
Organiser: The Blue Room
Start time: 20:00 Sun 1 Oct 2006
Website: www.blueroom.org.uk

The Blue Room is back, presenting exciting, new work from Ellen Phethean, Carol McGuigan, Alison Gangel and Christie Ducker, with music from Bex Mather.

Christy Ducker is an editor, reviewer and poet. She has also taught creative writing since 1999. Publications include Acknowledged Land, Diamond Twig, Mslexia, Orbis, The Reader, Smoke and The Wolf. She is currently working towards a first collection. She lives and works in Northumberland.

Ellen Phethean is a sound artist, poet, playwright and editor. Her poetry is in Sauce (Bloodaxe Books) and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She co-founded Diamond Twig press with Julia Darling and has written plays for radio, Northumbria University, Live Theatre's Youth Group and for schools. In 2003/4 she was writer in residence with Seven Stories and wrote Wall, a teen novel in poems, to be published by Smokestack Books and is currently working on the next novel in similar style. She teaches writing for children at The Centre for Lifelong Learning in Newcastle.

Carol McGuigan has had seven plays broadcast on BBC radio and five produced on stage. In the last three years, she's been developing as a prose writer. She has short stories in Tyneside Tales, an Endpapers anthology and in the second Phantoms at the Phil anthology published by Side Real Press this year. Her novel in progress, How the Eye Works, won her a New Writing North Northern Promise Award in April. She will read a short extract tonight.

Award-winning Alison Gangel is originally from Glasgow. She is the single parent of a ten-year-old and teaches English in a secondary school in Newcastle. She is writing a `powerful and distinctive' autobiographical novel entitled Give That Girl a Spotlight.

Bex Mather is a singer songwriter based in the North East. Over the last year, Bex has been writing new material, performed with Nitin Sawhney and the Aftershock project and been part of a PRS project working with five UK singer-songwriters and five Danish singer-songwriters to create new work and performance. Bex has been recording her second collaborative album, Lowland, and has support to create an EP and compilation album on a new label this autumn.

Tickets: £3 (£2 concessions) on the door.

The Bridge Hotel
Castle Garth
Newcastle Upon Tyne
Tyne and Wear
NE1 1RQ