Michael Amherst and Amelia Abraham
In conversation.

Join Michael Amherst, author of Go the Way Your Blood Beats, in conversation with Amelia Abraham at Gay’s the Word to celebrate his book winning the 2019 Stonewall Book Prize: Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award.

A free event; please RSVP on this Facebook Event Page (or just show up). Doors 7pm.

Using bisexuality as a frame, Go the Way Your Blood Beats questions the division of sexuality into straight and gay, in a timely exploration of the complex histories and psychologies of human desire.

A challenge to the idea that sexuality can either ever be fully known or neatly categorised, it is a meditation on desire’s unknowability. Interwoven with anonymous addresses to past loves – the sex of whom remain obscure – the book demonstrates the universalism of human desire.

Part essay, part memoir, part love letter, Go the Way Your Blood Beats asks us to see desire and sexuality as analogous with art – a mysterious, creative force. Published by Repeater Books.

Michael Amherst is a writer and critic. Born in Tewkesbury, he is a graduate of Oxford University and UEA’s Creative Writing Masters. His short fiction has appeared in publications including The White Review and Contrappasso and been longlisted for the BBC Opening Lines and Bath Short Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, New Statesman, Attitude, the Spectator and Versopolis: European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture, among others. He is a recipient of an award from Arts Council England and is currently working on a novel as part of a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London.

Amelia Abraham is a journalist from London. She has worked as an editor at Vice, Refinery29 and Dazed. Her main interest is LGBTQ+ identity politics, and she has written on this topic for the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Sunday Times, New Statesman, ES Magazine, i-D and Vogue. She also writes about feminist issues, human-rights, health, arts and culture and sex. She is the author of Queer Intentions (Picador, 2019).