My Family and Other Rock Stars - Tiffany Murray & Zoë Howe in conversation

My Family and Other Rockstars - Tiffany Murray in conversation with Zoë Howe

In a small corner of a field in Wales, Tiffany Murray is hiding with Boggle the dog, dreaming of her mum's moussaka, blackberry and apple crumble, and, if she's lucky, ice-cold lemonade. A sheep bleats. The smell of hay tickles her nose. The twang of a guitar and crack of a snare carry on the breeze.

It's the late 1970s and Tiff lives with her mum, Joan, at Rockfield, the iconic recording studios. This place of legend, where some of the most famous rock albums of all time were recorded, is the background to a freewheeling, ever-changing whirlwind of a childhood. Tiff's days are spent running around the farm, making friends with local wildlife and helping out with the endless array of dishes her mum creates to keep the bands fed. She's looking for a dog, she's looking for a father; but the one constant throughout is her and Joan, building an unconventional family in the most unlikely of locations.

My Family and Other Rock Stars is Tiff's remarkable, truly unique story of growing up in a rural idyll, of Cordon Bleu cookery and of a childhood where the chances of bumping into Freddie Mercury playing piano, or a group of Hell's Angels turning up to record for Lemmy, or even the hope of David Bowie appearing, were as normal as hopscotch and homework.

We have two ticket options available: * Event Only and *Event with Discounted Book Combo deal - books will be available for collection at the Festival.

Our event will be followed by a dedicated signing event with Tiff. RRP books will also be available for purchase on the day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiffany Murray's writing has appeared in Granta, the Guardian, the Telegraph, Sunday Times Style, GQ, Independent on Sunday and featured on BBC Radio 4. Her novels, Diamond Star Halo, Happy Accidents and Sugar Hall, have variously been shortlisted for the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize and received the Roger Deakin Award for nature writing. Tiffany has been a Hay Festival Fiction Fellow, a Fulbright scholar, and a Senior Lecturer, and she currently lives in a forest. My Family and Other Rock Stars is her first memoir

HOST:

Zoë Howe is a writer, editor, broadcaster and artist whose books span the worlds of music, culture and the occult. Part of the core team behind the award-winning documentary Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché, Zoë’s 2009 debut Typical Girls? The Story of the Slits, was, according to Dr Audrey Golden, the first full-scale biography of a female group; more recently, Zoë was the editor of Lindsay Reade’s A Continual Farewell and Pauline Murray’s hit memoir Life’s A Gamble. Her most recent publications include Witchful Thinking: The Wise Woman’s Handbook for Creating A Charmed Life (Llewellyn Worldwide) and her previous music books have covered artists including The Jesus & Mary Chain, Poly Styrene, Stevie Nicks, The Jam, Wilko Johnson and Lee Brilleaux. A great believer in the healing magic of words, music and humour, Zoë is a former ‘rock ‘n’ roll agony aunt’ for the Blues Magazine and mental health charity CALM. Her debut novel Shine On, Marquee Moon was shortlisted for the Virginia Prize and she is a regular host on Soho Radio with her Rock ’n’ Roll Witch show. Zoë is proud to be the festival’s ‘Louder Luminary’.

Host or Publisher Louder Than Words Festival