LECTURES

In his debut novel about a boy caught between a precocious new friend—the only one who understands him—and a charismatic but dominating mother who forbids the friendship, music journalist Peter Murphy boldly forays into the world of fiction. The Guardian raves about Murphy’s “spook-filled Irish landscape, rendered with gouts of blood-red humour.” Murphy will also read from “The Blacklight Ballroom,” a short story to be published this April in a Faber anthology of new Irish stories, as well as sections from a new novel in progress.