Please join us to celebrate the launch of Every Wrong Direction: An Emigré’s Memoir by Dan Burt. Hosting the reading will be literary journalist Suzi Feay.

The event will feature readings and discussion, and audience members will have the opportunity to ask their own questions. We will show the text during readings so that you can read along.

Register here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_p5-Kvjb1TXiyyqDJEq5tWA
and let us know you can make it by joining the Facebook event https://www.facebook.com/events/801459637949131

Every Wrong Direction recreates and dissects the bitter education of Dan Burt, an American emigré who never found a home in America. It begins in the row homes of Jewish immigrants and working-class Italians on the mean streets of 1950s South Philadelphia. Every Wrong Direction follows the author from the rough, working-class childhood that groomed him to be a butcher or charter boat captain, through America, Britain, and Saudi Arabia as student, lawyer, spy, culture warrior, and expatriate, ending with a photo of his college rooms at St John’s College, Cambridge. Between this beginning and end, through a Philadelphia commuter college, to Cambridge, then Yale Law School, across the working to upper classes, three countries, and seven cities over forty-three years, it maps his pursuit of, realisation, disillusionment with, and abandonment of America and the American Dream.

Dan Burt is a prolific author whose work has appeared in The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and The New Statesman, among numerous other publications, newspapers, periodicals, and anthologies. He is the author of four books of poetry and prose and a brief childhood memoir, You Think It Strange.

Registration for this online event will cost £2, later redeemable against the cost of the book. All attendees will receive the discount code and how to purchase the book during and after event.

Please note that there is a limited number of places for the reading, so do book early to avoid disappointment. You should receive a confirmation email with details on how to join after you register. If this does not arrive, please contact us to let us know. Please also be aware that clicking ‘attending’ on the Facebook event will not guarantee your place – you must complete the Zoom registration here.

About the speakers:

Dan Burt was born in 1942 in South Philadelphia. He graduated from LaSalle College a Philadelphia working class college, read English at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1969. He was a lawyer, businessman, and Honorary Fellow of St. John’s when he began to publish poetry in 2008. Carcanet Press published four books of his poetry and prose (2008 – 2019), and Marlborough Graphics/Lintott Press a poetry and photography collaboration with Paul Hodgson (2010). Notting Hill Press brought out his brief childhood memoir, You Think It Strange, in the UK (2014), as did Overlook Press in the US (2015). His work has appeared in The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The New Statesman, Commonweal, TLS, Granta, PN Review, Clutag Press, other newspapers, periodicals, and anthologies, and been featured on the BBC. He lives and writes in London, Cambridge, and Schooner Head, Maine.

Suzi Feay is a literary journalist for the FT, Spectator and Guardian. She was formerly literary editor of the Independent on Sunday and is the current President of the Critics’ Circle.