Brigid Lowe: The Bloody Branch (Vintage)

Wednesday 4 February

6-7.30

Brigid will be talking about her debut novel. Three powerful heroines – a queen, a sorceress and woman made of flowers – plot revenge against the villain who wronged them. A gorgeously dark debut novel inspired by Celtic Britain's original fantasy fiction.

Man is cruel but the flowers will take their revenge.

Three great heroines – slave queen Goewin, the reclusive sorceress Arianrhod, and Blodeuwedd, a woman conjured from flowers – unite to avenge themselves on the most dangerous man in ancient legend.

Gwydion is a powerful sorcerer, whose ambition and cruelty wreak havoc across the kingdom. When at last the earth itself is put at stake, Goewin, Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd each unleash their uncanny powers to challenge him.

In this vital and visceral novel, Brigid Lowe casts ancient light on desire, sex and our relationship with nature to bring these Celtic heroines to explosive, sensuous, blossoming new life.

Brigid Lowe grew up in a remote Welsh-speaking community on Ynys Môn, with her younger sister and Irish immigrant parents. She now lives with her children in that part of Scotland known as Yr Hen Ogledd – The Old North – formerly joined with Wales in one Cumbric nation. She studied literature at Bangor, completed a doctorate at Oxford, and went on to teach and research at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities, publishing a book and many essays on the art of fiction. Brigid traces her descent from travellers, circus performers, mill workers and gallowglass warriors. She takes photographs of flowers, forages her food, clambers pinnacles, and swims in ice and caves and bottomless pools.

'A rich, visceral fever dream unafraid to take you to the darkest corners of myth and magic... always powerful, the story is conveyed in language that branches, metamorphoses, and invites you to follow ...'

Lucy Holland, author of SISTERSONG

'Brigid's book is a masterpiece of poetic reimagining, woven into an intricate, otherworldly, complex and dramatic novel that held me spellbound.'

Barbara Erskine, Sunday Times Bestselling Author

Tickets created by Susan Wilson @livielovexx