
13 April 2018
Pin Drop with Lionel Shriver featured in House Seven Magazine
Lionel Shriver, who returns to Pin Drop on 18th April, is featured in this month’s issue of House Seven, the magazine from Soho House. More information here.
Sunday’s magazine were dominated by the incredible women we have the privilege of working with at Pin Drop. Elizabeth Day interviewed Kylie Minogue for cover interview of The Sunday Times Magazine. And across at the Observer, Pin Drop star, Selma Blair, was featured on the cover of the magazine and interviewed here.
Robert Bound, Chris Power and Pin Drop’s Elizabeth Day, celebrate the joys of the short story and our forthcoming anthology of original short fiction, A Short Affair. Listen to their discussion on why these lithe texts are worth more than just their word count and don’t play second fiddle to the novel.
Listen to the Monocle podcast here.
Soho House magazine features Pin Drop with celebrity chef, Jason Atherton, in conversation with Simon Oldfield. During this exclusive interview, Jason shares his journey from humble roots to the helm of his global restaurant group, his experiences working with Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Ferran Adria, and being awarded a Michelin star almost immediately upon opening his flagship restaurant, Pollen Street Social.
Read an interview in the FT Weekend with Pin Drop Founders, Simon Oldfield and Elizabeth Day, about their favourite places in London. Read more here.
Pin Drop’s live performance series, Portrayal for Burberry, which took place during Here We Are at Old Sessions House, featured here in Creative Review. Starring Ben Okri, Russell Tovey, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Tuppence Middleton.
Here We Are: Burberry show explores “the British way of life”
Portrayal for Burberry; featured a series of live performances by Pin Drop Studio with Russell Tovey, Tuppence Middleton, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Ben Okri.
The programme, curated by Simon Oldfield for Burberry, featured literature specially selected in response to the inspirations behind Burberry’s September 2017 collection and the accompanying exhibition, Here We Are.
Award-winning British actor, Russell Tovey, opened the series on Monday 18th September with a series of readings.
Full performance schedule:
+ Russell Tovey: Monday, 18th September
+ Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Thursday, 21st September
+ Ben Okri: Wednesday 27th September
+ Tuppence Middleton: Saturday 30th September
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We’re thrilled to announce the publication of The Party by Elizabeth Day – the much-anticipated fourth novel from Pin Drop Studio’s Co-founder.
Published by 4th Estate on 13th July, The Party is a gripping story of obsession and betrayal, privilege and hypocrisy, set in the unassailable heart of the British establishment which has already garnered comparisons to The Talented Mr Ripley, Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History.
Sebastian Faulks describes The Party as ‘Witty, dark and compelling’, Vogue calls it ‘a satirical thriller‘, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) says ‘I practically murdered this book in an evening I loved it so much. The Party is a terrifying, hilarious, brilliantly written original with a wit to die for’.
Already a Number One Amazon Bestseller, Louise Doughty of The Observer featured The Party in Best Holiday Reads for Summer 2017.
Get your copy of The Party and read an interview with Elizabeth exclusively for Pin Drop Studio here.
This month sees the release of Elizabeth Day’s widely-anticipated fourth novel The Party.
In the latest issue of British Vogue, The Party is the headline book for summertime reads, which Sebastian Faulks describes as, ‘witty, dark and compelling’, and is receiving rave reviews ahead of it’s release.
The Party is published by 4th Estate on 13th July.
Dame Penelope Wilton, announced Cherise Saywell as the winner of the RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017 for her exceptional story, Morelia Spilota. The presentation was followed by a live narration of Morelia Spilota by Dame Penelope Wilton, which will be released as a podcast soon.
‘‘The quality of writing and the ambition of the writers seems to get stronger each year. It was a pleasure and a privilege to judge the prize and to encounter this year’s short-list.’
– Tim Marlow, Artistic Director, Royal Academy of Arts
‘It was a privilege to judge this year’s RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award and select the winning story from such a strong shortlist. Cherise Saywell is a worthy winner for her superb story, ‘Morelia Spilota’, which is written with great confidence and verve. It is a brilliant short story.’
– Simon Oldfield, Founder, Pin Drop
‘Cherise’s story is a superb example of the short form: elegant, lyrical and with a quiet, restrained power. It is written with such surety of tone and pace that reading it, you feel at once you are in the hands of a master storyteller.’
The RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award 2017 is supported by Audible.
We are delighted to announce the shortlist for this year’s RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award – an award in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts.
Dame Penelope Wilton, who is known to millions for her roles across film, stage and television, will announce and narrate this year’s winning story on 23rd June at a special awards ceremony at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Commenting on the outstanding standard of the shortlist this year, Pin Drop Co-founder and award judge, Simon Oldfield commented:
“Congratulations to all the superb writers featured in this year’s shortlist for the RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award. We have been impressed by the extraordinary quality and diversity of the stories selected for the shortlist, which represents an exciting range of genres, tone and subjects. It has been thrilling to see such fresh and accomplished writing emerge from a talented pool. Each story surprises, delights and leaves a lasting impression long after reading.”
Shortlist
Anna Stewart, The Way I Breathed
Anne O’Brien, These Silver Fish
Carol Farrelly, Emergency
Cherise Saywell, Morelia Spilota
Craig Burnett, Feathers Thick With Oil
Douglas W. Milliken, Heart’s Last Pass
Emily Bullock, Freshwater
Honoria Beirne, Rafferty
Jarred McGinnis, Rough Beasts
Joanna Campbell, Brad’s Rooster Food
Melanie Whipman, Undine
Rebecca F. John, Paper Chains
We received an unprecedented number of entries this year, with writing of an incredibly high standard from all around the world. The award, which offers a unique platform for emerging and established writers to showcase their short fiction, is being judged by Pin Drop Co-founders Elizabeth Day and Simon Oldfield, and the RA’s Director of Artistic Programmes, Tim Marlow.
Supported by Audible.
We are delighted to announce the longlist for this year’s RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award – an award in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts.
Dame Penelope Wilton, the award-winning actress who has enjoyed an extensive career starring in numerous films and television productions including Calendar Girls, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Downton Abbey, will announce and narrate this year’s winning story on 23rd June at a special awards ceremony at the RA. The award is judged by Pin Drop Co-founders Elizabeth Day and Simon Oldfield, and the RA’s Director of Artistic Programmes, Tim Marlow.
Simon Oldfield commented:
“This year, we have received an unprecedented number of entries from across the globe and the quality has been extraordinary. Pin Drop champions superb short fiction and we’re delighted to see both established and emerging writers on the longlist, with stories that capture unique voices and new writing with confidence and verve.”
Longlist
Adrian Todd Zuniga, Lincoln Wimbley Writes a Story at 37,000 Feet
Anna Stewart, The Way I Breathed
Anne O’Brien, These Silver Fish
Anthony McGuinness, Fair Exchange is No Robbery
Antonia Honeywell, Dora Maar and the Secret Tree
Arthur Allan, Before the Curtain
Carol Farrelly, Emergency
Cathy Thomas, Pigs
Catriona Ward, Lula-Belle
Cherise Saywell, Morelia Spilota
Ciarán Collins, Angela
Craig Burnett, Feathers Thick with Oil
Douglas W. Milliken, Heart’s Last Pass
Emily Bullock, Freshwater
Hanna Ali, Bloated
Hannah Persaud, Dress Rehearsal
Harry Godfrey, Lobster Man
Honoria Beirne, Rafferty
Jarred McGinnis, Rough Beasts
Joanna Campbell, Brad’s Rooster Food
Jude Cook, Being Here
Juno Baker, The Rules of the Game
KM Elkes, Shoreham Street
Melanie Whipman, Undine
Philippa Holloway, Like a Message
Rachel Stevenson, English Beach
Rebecca F. John, Paper Chains
Ruth Brandt, Going West
Sarah Evans, My Mother’s Story
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Supported by Audible.
Join the Pin Drop team on Saturday 23rd September 2017 at the Charles Dickens Museum for a masterclass with award-winning writer, A. L. Kennedy. In the space of one day, you will learn how to find your voice, hone your writing skills and construct a compelling storyline. Find out more here.
Pin Drop has been selected as one of the highlights of Burberry’s Makers House by Harper’s Bazaar – the groundbreaking show venue, which included our curated series of reading performances with BAFTA Breakthrough Brits and world leading actors including Dame Sian Phillips and Juliet Stevenson. Read more here.
Matthew Whitehouse interviewed Princess Julia ahead of her special appearance at Pin Drop during London Fashion Week. Read more here.
Pin Drop featured in The A List by Vanity Fair, highlighting our series of reading performances at Burberry Makers House, produced in collaboration with our friends at The New Craftsmen. Read more here.
As London Fashion Week comes to a close, music writer, DJ and fashion-world favourite Princess Julia joins us to read new material and tell stories from her extraordinary life. Princess Julia first came to notice in the early 1980s as part of the Blitz Kids club scene alongside Marc Almond and Boy George. Her appearance for Pin Drop comes hot on the heels of her sell-out, one-woman show at East London gay bar The Glory.
Pin Drop collaborated with Burberry and The New Craftsmen to curate a series of short readings drawn from the collection’s inspiration, Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando.
The series took place at Burberry Makers House between 20–27 September and included readers from major British actors including Juliet Stevenson, Dame Sian Phillips and Lisa Dwan to breakthrough talent including Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Juliet Oldfield, Clara Paget and Jeremy Neumark Jones.
Read more abut the collaboration here.
Award-winning actress, Juliet Stevenson, announced Claire Fuller as the winner of the RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award 2016 for her exceptional story, A Quiet Tidy Man. The presentation was followed by a live narration of A Quiet Tidy Man by Juliet Stevenson, which you can listen to here.
‘I’ve loved judging the RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award. The talent was plentiful, fresh and exciting and Claire Fuller is a very deserving winner.
– Simon Oldfield
‘Claire Fuller’s brilliant story is such a worthy winner: both darkly comic and deeply moving, with a modern-gothic undertone that reminded me of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. It’s going to be a wonderful addition to the Pin Drop archive.’
– Elizabeth Day
The RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award 2016 is supported by Audible.
Congratulations to Pin Drop narrator A.L. Kennedy for her inclusion in the long list for the Man Booker Prize 2016, announced earlier today.
Kennedy’s eighth novel, Serious Sweet, takes place over a single day, and is surprisingly Kennedy’s first Man Booker nominated title. To the right is a gallery of images of A.L. Kennedy reading for Pin Drop at past events.
Special mention must also go to Ian McGuire and Virginia Reeves, also included in the list, both published by Scribner UK, who will be publishing Pin Drop’s first collection of short stories in the near future.
The winner of the Man Booker Prize will be announced on 25th October 2016, best of luck to all the authors. You can hear A.L. Kennedy reading for Pin Drop on RTE’s The Book Show back in February 2014 here.
We are delighted to announce the shortlist for this year’s RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award – an award in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts.
Juliet Stevenson, who is known to millions for her roles across film, stage and television, will announce and narrate this year’s winning story on 24th June at a special awards ceremony at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Shortlist
Barney Walsh, Under the Waves
Catherine McNamara, Pia Tortora
Cathy Thomas, Fish and Chips Season
Claire Fuller, A Quiet Tidy Man
Kirstin Zhang, Mountain Strawberries
Melanie Whipman, Silent as Storks
We received an unprecedented number of entries from across the globe with writing of an incredibly high standard. The award, which offers a unique platform for emerging and established writers to showcase their short fiction, is being judged by Pin Drop Co-founders Elizabeth Day and Simon Oldfield, and the RA’s Director of Artistic Programmes, Tim Marlow.
Supported by Audible.
The influential artist will read a short story before taking questions from the audience, moderated by Pin Drop founder Simon Oldfield. Blake is perhaps best known for his iconic sleeve design for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, frequently voted the greatest album cover of all time. Other key works include Self-Portrait with Badges (1961) and The First Real Target (1961). Blake has gone on to influence numerous contemporary artists, and is recognised as a significant figure in the Pop Art movement.
Asked which piece of at he is most proud of, Peter answered, ‘I would say Self-Portrait with Badges (1961) because it won the John Moores Painting Prize in the Junior section, and was a very important picture for me to paint at the time.’
Pin Drop is delighted to announce that Audible, the world’s leading provider of premium digital spoken audio information and entertainment, has signed up to be our official sponsor for live events in the UK.
Tracey Markham, Country Manager, Audible, added, “The wonderful thing about events like Pin Drop is that they tap into the love we all have for listening to a story. Over the past decade we’ve worked hard to bring new life to listening as a leisure activity through our catalogue of audiobooks and other audio content. We see Pin Drop, which pairs the best short stories with the finest narrators, as a kindred spirit in that everything it does is about communicating the love of listening to the wider public. As such we’re thrilled to support its events as sponsor, and can’t wait to see what they have planned in 2016.”
To mark the partnership, Audible is offering everyone a free trial and audiobook. Download your free audiobook here.
Stephen Fry, at a special event at the Royal Academy of Arts, narrated Ms. Featherstone and The Beast by Bethan Roberts, the winner of the inaugural RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award. You can listen to Stephen’s narration here.
Stephen Fry commented: “Pin Drop is a wonderfully innovative scheme that unites the written arts with the visual. In iconic venues like the Royal Academy, new and established writers have their works read, discussed and questioned by enthusiastic audiences. The presence of the written word in public spaces filled with visual art reminds writers, whose work is so often private and inward, of the capacity of literature to reach out, uniting it with the family of all the arts where it belongs. I really believe in Pin Drop and felt immensely rewarded to be involved.”
The quality of the entries of this year’s award was high and varied and included a cast of wonderful characters from life models to lion tamers. Returning a shortlist of exceptional quality, the judges selected six stories which each do what a good short story should do: invites us into their world, engages from the first sentence and ends up telling us something about ourselves. In such a competitive field, we needed a truly exceptional winner and our choice was unanimous. Bethan Robert’s evocative story Ms. Featherstone and The Beast, is both tender and poignant. It deals with big themes – love, war and loss of innocence – with a restrained lightness of touch. And, like all the best short stories, its impact lingered and continues to do so.
Bethan’s first novel The Pools was published in 2007 and won a Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers’ Award. Her second novel The Good Plain Cook, published in 2008, was serialized on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and was chosen as one of Time Out’s books of the year. My Policeman, the story of a 1950s policeman, his wife, and his male lover, followed in 2012, and was chosen as that year’s City Read for Brighton. Her latest novel is Mother Island. She also writes short fiction (in 2006 she was awarded the Olive Cook short story prize by the Society of Authors), and drama for BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton with her family.
The judging panel included Pin Drop co-founders Simon Oldfield and Elizabeth Day, and the Royal Academy’s Director of Artistic Programmes, Tim Marlow.
Earlier this year, we launched a special literature award offering a platform for emerging and established writers to showcase their short stories, in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts. Stephen Fry will announce and read the winning short story, which will be recorded live and included in Pin Drop’s audio archive of narrations by acclaimed authors and actors including Lionel Shriver, Graham Swift, Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd. The shortlisted authors are:
Wendy Brandmark, The Other Room
Sarah Evans, Iron and Blood
Virginia Harris, The Inspector
C. Kozinski, Kevlar
Bethan Roberts, Ms. Featherstone and The Beast
Miriam Kate Robinson, Call Ladies
The RA and Pin Drop Short Story Award continues our collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts with this special literature award, offering a unique platform for emerging and established writers to showcase their short stories. In the spirit of the Summer Exhibition, the competition is open submission. All stories were read anonymously, and interestingly the judges have arrived at an all-female shortlist. The judging panel includes Pin Drop co-founders Simon Oldfield and Elizabeth Day, and the Royal Academy’s Director of Artistic Programmes, Tim Marlow.
Join Pin Drop for an evening with Tom Rob Smith, author of the bestselling novel Child 44, now adapted into a film starring Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman. Child 44 was long-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, and nominated for the 2008 Costa First novel Award (former Whitbread). The series continued with The Secret Speech and concluded with the third novel in the series Agent 6, Smith’s fourth book, The Farm, a stand-alone novel, was published in February 2014 to critical acclaim and he has also written London Spy for BBC Two, starring Ben Whishaw.
When asked about his daily writing routine, Tom said, “I wake up very early and start writing by 6am. The early mornings are when I’m most creative. My study has a view over London – I watched the Shard being built while writing ‘The Farm’ and drinking strong Assam tea.”
Tom will be reading a short story and an extract from one of his novels followed by a Q&A with Pin Drop founder Simon Oldfield.
At last night’s Pin Drop, Richard Dawkins regaled Soho House with his parodies of Jeeves & Wooster. The ES Londoner’s Diary reports, Dawkins seeks out his inner Bertie.
“The Londoner has been marvelling recently at the fact that Professor Richard Dawkins has been quiet of late, by his standards at least. Now the mystery may have been solved: he’s been busy with Jeeves & Wooster.
The atheist and academic was at Soho House for a talk hosted by short-story celebrants Pin Drop last night, where he read tales adapted from, and voiced in the style of, P G Wodehouse. Dawkins writes the stories for his clan gatherings so there are no plans for release, perhaps because, he joked, “the family are pretty litigious with the Wodehouse estate”.
We like lists of the best things in the world, particularly when we’re at number six in a list of the 100 Best Things in the World Right Now. Thank you GQ. Read more here.
We are delighted to be featured in the culture special issue of ES Magazine, in a piece by Alice-Azania Jarvis on the rise of literary salon. Read more here.
We kicked off the New Year with a narration by the multi-talented A L Kennedy, author, comedian, broadcaster, Professor of Creative Writing…it’s almost easier to list the things Alison doesn’t do rather than those she does. Alison read ‘This Man’, from her brilliant new short story collection, All the Rage, to an intimate audience in the Bloomsbury apartment of Pin Drop co-founder, Simon Oldfield. The rooms were filled with works of art from 20th Century masters Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat to contemporary artists Ryan Leigh, Matthew La Croix and Simon Foxall, so that as Alison read, we were able to let our minds be stimulated by both sight and sound.
The evening was recorded by Irish broadcaster RTE who will be featuring Pin Drop as part of their flagship arts programme, The Book Show, presented by Sinead Gleeson. In fact, aside from the stunning narration by Alison, perhaps the most impressive part of the entire evening was watching the RTE producer, Zoe Comyns, manually hold the sound boom for the best part of half-an-hour without a murmur of complaint. That woman has excellent arm muscle control.
Listen to the full programme here.
Our narration was also featured in Canada’s The Globe and Mail in a wonderful piece written by journalist and author Leah McClaren. Leah instantly understood what Pin Drop was about and totally got to the heart of what makes a short story narration so very special. If you have a moment, do read the article here.
We’ve just come back from Pin Drop in New York, our first foray into transatlantic narration, so it seemed only fitting that our star narrator was Colum McCann, whose latest novel, TransAtlantic, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Colum read a brand new short story to a rapt audience of New Yorkers at the Churner and Churner gallery in Chelsea which was showing a exhibition of new works by British sculptor, Nick Hornby (no relation to the literary Nick Hornby).
The whole evening was sponsored by our partners, Audible. We also listened to a narration by the brilliant writer, Lea Carpenter, who read a beautiful Sam Shepard short followed by her own original short story inspired by the Raymond Davis incident in Pakistan. Pin Drop co-founder, Elizabeth Day, read a George Saunders short story in advance of the US publication of her second novel, Home Fires. All three narrators shared a single theme – the impact of war through the generations in both America and the UK. The evening was introduced by Pin Drop Co-founder, Simon Oldfield.
It was an incredible night, with so many people turning up after news of Pin Drop had crossed the Atlantic. This marks the start of many more US Pin Drops. Thank you NYC!
Pin Drop was recently invited by the Crafts Council of Ireland to stage a one-off narration in their fantastic space at Tent London in Brick Lane’s Old Truman Brewery. The exhibition, Vernacular, was being staged as part of London Design Festival and featured the work of over 20 designers including this amazing desk by Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey.
To fit in with the overall theme of the event, Pin Drop asked acclaimed Irish actress Lisa Dwyer Hogg (currently appearing at the National Theatre in Richard Eyre’s Liola – and yes, that is Lisa on the poster) to read a short story by one of Ireland’s foremost contemporary writers, Kevin Barry. Lisa read Atlantic City – a poignant, funny and telling short story that even included the opportunity for Lisa to launch into a pitch-perfect rendition of Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday. Lisa narrated while sitting in a particularly comfortable chair designed by O’Driscoll Furniture and upholstered in the finest Donegal tweed.
We had a fantastic night, enjoying free Jamesons whisky cocktails (absolutely lethal ones at that) and welcomed a whole host of new Pin Drop attendees, including the actor Stephen Rea and the designer Paul Costelloe. Thank you to Julia Ravenscroft and Ann Mulrooney and all her team at the Crafts Council of Ireland, our sponsors Audible UK and, most importantly, Lisa herself who was a really brilliant narrator.
Francesca Segal’s excellent narration for Pin Drop on 31 July was recently featured here in The Evening Standard.
Francesca read an extract from her Costa Award-winning debut novel The Innocents at Simon Oldfield Gallery in Mount Street. She also read a story by Edith Wharton as her own novel is loosely based on Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.
On 11 June, we hosted a wonderful evening at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, holding a Pin Drop narration overlooking the beautiful picnic lawn before a spellbinding production of To Kill A Mockingbird. Highly-acclaimed actress, Juliet Oldfield, read Bernice Bobs Her Hair, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
On 20 June, we held a Pin Drop narration in the Houses of Parliament, offering our guests an exclusive and intimate look inside these iconic buildings. Our venue for the evening was the Jubilee Room, just off Westminster Hall, which came complete with the most fantastic wallpaper Pin Drop has ever seen.
Our first narrator that evening was the acclaimed young poet Owen Sheers, who read incredibly movingly from his prose poem Pink Mist, informed by the testimonies of soldiers who served in Afghanistan. We then welcomed the actress Lyndsey Marshal (Garrow’s Law, Poirot, The Hours, Rome) who took a break from appearing in Othello at the National Theatre to read the Hercule Poirot mystery, ‘The Kidnapped Prime Minister’ – complete with a fabulous Belgian accent.
Afterwards, we drank champagne and munched on delicious Propercorn popcorn – all in the shadow of Big Ben. The evening was a huge success and marked the start of our special programme of events sponsored by Audible, the UK’s largest provider of audiobooks. Thank you to the Houses of Parliament for being such generous hosts.