MAY WE FEED THE KING: Rebecca Perry in conversation

We are excited to welcome Rebecca Perry to Blackwell's in partnership with the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing to celebrate her debut novel, May We Feed The King.

Doors: 6.30pm, starts: 6.45pm

Tickets are £4, or free when purchasing a copy of the book in advance.

About the book:

She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. A replica pie, half-eaten, perched on a small desk in the servant’s quarters. A fruit bowl, filled with artificial apples, pomegranates and pears, with one piece missing. It should feel as though her subject has just left the room; the air should be alive with their energy. But in the great halls and lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of her life begin to blur.

He is a reluctant ruler, rushed to the throne after the untimely deaths of his two older brothers. He has no hunger for power, and he resists the crown. But as winter turns to spring, whispers begin to fly around the court. Some say he is weak and will lead the country to ruin. Others call him a cuckhold, unable to satisfy his wife. And with the belief that the King is not fit for the throne, comes the idea that another might rule in his stead.

May We Feed the King dances between a historical subject who resists the march of progress and a woman who turns to the past to hide from her present, to offer a beguiling meditation on history and storytelling: on what makes a King ‘Great’, and a life meaningful.

About the author:

Rebecca Perry was born in 1986 in London. She graduated from Manchester’s Centre for New Writing in 2008 and lives in London. She has published several pamphlets, including little armoured (Seren, 2012), which won the Poetry Wales Purple Moose Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice; cleanliness of rooms and walls (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2017); insect & lilac (2019), co-authored with Amy Key from a joint residency at Halsway Manor (the National Centre for Folk Arts); and beaches (Offord Road Press, 2019). Her first book-length collection, Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017, and was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection. Her second book-length collection, Stone Fruit, also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was published by Bloodaxe in 2021.

If you cannot make the event but would like a dedicated copy of the book, please email events.manchester@blackwell.co.uk or call us on 0161 274 3331.

Our event format is usually a 45 minute discussion between the author and interviewer, followed by a chance for audience members to ask questions. There will be the opportunity to get your book signed/dedicated after the event. Events are a brilliant opportunity to discover new books, meet authors and likeminded readers and learn something new.

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