I hope you made the launch of Everything Must Go at Manchester Literature Festival & Lancaster Litfest. If not don’t despair, here is a flavour of the events.

First of all Rosie in full flow:

Rosie reading her poems was of course the highlight of both events, and even for someone like me who has read the poems many times, her reading gave me new insights.

At both events, the enthusiastic and packed audiences were keen to ask questions and this highlighted several aspects of this remarkable poetry collection.

Since her brush with cancer Rosie hates the words ‘brave’ and ‘tragic’ because: ‘I’m neither brave nor tragic just human.’

Being in hospital and feeling ill is a very universal experience, and yet we tend to move illness and death out of the way.

Rosie told us, she turned out to be the world’s worst junkie because she was alergic to morphine. Being drugged up didn’t make you forget you were hurting, you were just more detached from it.

Actually she told us having conquered cancer liberated her, she lost a lot but also some of the things she was hanging on to had actually ceased to matter.

It certainly influenced her writing but she feels it’s for the better.

It was wonderfully uplifting to hear Rosie, and thank you to all who came to the events, even if you couldn’t I hope your’re inspired and acquire your copy of Everything Must Go.

Michael Smaczylo wrote a marvellous blog about Rosie Garland’s reading on the MLF website and Freya Gallagher-Jones blogged about Rosie reading for Lancaster Litfest.

Finally we’d like to thank the marvellous support from Jon Atkin, festival coordinator at MLF, Mike Hayes, events co-ordinator at Waterstones Deansgate Manchester & Nici West, events officer and Jonathan Bean, Books Manager at Lancaster Litfest.