In lieu of joining together around a dinner party table, Dinner Party Press is coming to you with a webseries called COMFORT FOOD. It’s a literary potluck exploring food, identity, cooking, and eating in lockdown. Each episode will feature some of our favourite writers sharing poems, essays and works-in-progress.

Episode 2 is titled FEEDING YOUR BODY. We want to talk about food as identity and expression, food as love, aversion to food as control, appetite and hunger as the claiming of space. We are joined by writers Lara Williams, Oliver Zarandi, Francesca Reece, Sam van Zweden and Lily Keil.

ABOUT THE READERS

Lara Williams is an author based in Manchester, UK whose short story collection Treats was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Edinburgh First Book Award and the Saboteur Awards and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her novel Supper Club won the Guardian 'Not the Booker' Prize and was listed as a Book of the Year 2019 by both TIME and Vogue.

Oliver Zarandi is a writer and photographer. His first book, Soft Fruit In The Sun, was released by Hexus Press in 2019. His writing has appeared in Hotel, The Quietus, Hobart, Vol 1 Brooklyn and iD. You can contact him on Twitter @zarandi or on Instagram @ozrndi.

Francesca Reece is a Paris-based writer from North Wales. She was the 2019 recipient of the Desperate Literature Prize for her short story So Long Sarajevo/They Miss You So Badly. Her debut novel, Voyeur, will be published by Tinder Press in summer 2021.

Lily Keil has been a freelance editor who has edited several books, websites and magazines and is now a Content Strategist and UX Writer based in Paris. Lily is the author of No Money, No Honey published in Meanjin, Vol. 71, Issue 3, 2012.

Sam van Zweden is a Melbourne-based writer who has appeared in the Saturday Paper, Meanjin, Cordite, the Sydney Review of Books, among others. Her first book, Eating with My Mouth Open, won the 2019 KYD Unpublished Manuscript Award and will be published in 2021 by NewSouth.

ABOUT THE EVENT

This is a virtual event that takes place on Zoom. We'll be gathering over leisurely morning coffee in London and a Sunday evening glass of wine in Australia at 11am BST / 12pm CEST / 8pm AEST.