Bad Language with So Mayer and Adam Benmakhlouf | 4th March at 7pm

There is no such thing as a safe word

Join us to discuss Bad Language by So Mayer where they blend memoir and manifesto to explore the politics of speech, while looking at how language has been used – and abused – in their own life. What is the relationship between language and sexual violence? And how can we make ourselves up' in language when words themselves are encoded by a dominant culture that insists we see ourselves as powerless listeners rather than active speakers?

Examining the semantic traps of their multi-lingual childhood – and taking in texts from the Torah to Grimms’ Fairytales, from protest bust cards to the works of Ursula K. Le Guin – Mayer asks who gets to speak, and who is forced into silence. Bad Language calls out the harm that words can do, while searching for crafty ways through which we can collectively reclaim language for protest and pleasure.

SO MAYER is a writer, editor, bookseller and organiser. Truth & Dare, their first collection of speculative fiction, was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness and Edge Hill Short Story prizes. With Sarah Shin, they co-edited Ursula K. Le Guin, Space Crone, winner of the 2024 Locus Award for non-fiction. Bad Language is their second book for Peninsula, after A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing.

So will be joined in conversation with Adam Benmakhlouf (@adambenmakhlouf). Adam is a writer and artist who lives and works across Scotland. They are a Lecturer in Fine Art in Edinburgh College of Art and Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Writing at University of Dundee. They are finalising their 5-year Collaborative Doctoral Award (2021-26), titled ‘Attempts To Locate the Body Are Continuing’ with Dundee Contemporary Arts and University of Dundee, fully funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities. New works from this project have been presented in Dundee Contemporary Arts (2022), The Yale Centre for British Art (2023), Listen Gallery (2023), CCA Glasgow (2023), Manchester Whitworth Gallery (2024), and Hospitalfield, Arbroath (2022-24). Adam also is one of thirty-three writers included in the major new publication of working class writing titled Bread Alone: What happens when we run out of working class writers? edited by Kate Pasola, and available in bookshops everywhere from the 9^th of March 2026.

You can choose from three types of ticket.

Event Ticket with a copy of Bad Language

Book Voucher and Event Ticket - this ticket means you have £5 to spend on books on the night of the event. This option also helps us keep our events programme running

Event Ticket Only - A classic option, timeless even, absolutely does what it says on the tin

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