Last week I headed to @lighthousebks to paint their window in anticipation of their upcoming event with @lamornaaash for her incredible book 'Don't Forget We're Here Forever'. The cover was such a joy to adapt, medieval + religious iconography is so up my street. Thank you to Jen + @bloomsburypublishing for this opportunity :)
Dream location to be between @klausssie & @michelleteaz at my fave bookshop (@lrbbookshop ) & event series to celebrate 25 years of Michelle Tea’s glorious messy classic Valencia, ft my scruffy intro notes @serpentstail
Long & also very fun indie bookshop signing crawl in the April sun with Bloomsbury’s finest @g_rdip &&& being a Times Bestseller last weekend! Last few weeks have been very very nice, in lots of ways
We’re extremely excited to be hosting the brilliant @lamornaaash , in convo with @lauracanthackett , to celebrate the paperback release of Don’t Forget You’re Here Forever! You can grab a ticket at the link in our bio 🎟️ 📚
Just one year late, I got the best book launch a person could ask for. Shout out @funnyweatherbooks for being the coolest & most generous bookshop for hosting us, shout out @theamclachlan_ for being a visionary & spending all day letting me be the sous to your chef, shout out Nora Ephron for providing us with inspo for the ideal book launch spread, shout out to Ocado for the half baked baguettes, shout out all the friends who helped us carry stuff over to the bookshop, shout out everyone who read, so nice to share it with you!
Today has been completely crackers, in the best way possible. Unbelievably grateful that Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever is a @waterstones Non Fiction book of the month. And to see this display at @piccadillywaterstones was a total dream. I wander through this bookshop daydreaming pretty much every day while I’m writing, so it’s all a bit surreal tbh. Love to everyone who has read my book and said nice stuff. You’re all the best x
'In the weeks leading up to the publication of my second book, Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever, I entered a sort of prolonged slow-motion meltdown state. What unnerved me was how I’d become, inadvertently and only for a short space of time around May last year, a spokesperson, or even a poster girl, for Christianity in Britain.
'The book is an investigation into the relationships various young people in Britain have with the religion. But it is also about my own relationship to faith, so I ought not to have been surprised that on podcasts and radio shows (some Christian, some secular), I was repeatedly asked, “But are you an actual Christian now?”, before being strafed with more particularised questions like, “Do you believe in the Annunciation, the Resurrection, in heaven?” At which point I would enter a semi-aphasic state, incapable of producing any answers beyond a tentative and what I hoped was a little enigmatic, “Sometimes?”
'This satisfied no one, obviously. And I could not fail to notice the irony: I had spent the past four years asking other people to make manifest the substance and parameters of their Christian belief, to reduce it all down into mere words. Only now was I discovering first-hand how awkward and inelegant a process it is, to attempt to translate what is primarily an internal, extra-linguistic experience into verbal expression.'
Read the full article on our website - link in bio
✍️ @lamornaaash
📸 @sukidhanda
Don't Forget We're Here Forever by Lamorna Ash (Bloomsbury, £10.99). Order a copy at observershop.co.uk for £9.89. Free UK delivery on online orders over £25
📚🚫 Smearing food and drink on a book? Scribbling notes on fresh, newly-printed pages? Borrowing books and dropping them in the sea?!
Here are some of our beloved authors’ most heinous BOOK CRIMES. With huge thanks to Ash Sarkar (Minority Rule), George Saunders (Vigil), and Lamorna Ash (Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever)!
In The Observer Magazine this weekend: the grit and grace of Emma Corrin
From Princess Di to Marvel villain, the British actor’s range continues to impress. They talk fame, hope – and flatmates.
Pick up a copy of The Observer this weekend to read the full interview.
Interview: @lamornaaash
Photographer: @brendanfreemanphoto
Fashion editor: @jojones_fashion
Creative: @helenseamons
Makeup: @ginakanemakeup at Caren using Chantecaille
Hair: @danielmartin81 using Sam McKnight
Fashion assistant: @samdeaman
Photography assistant: @damienhockey
Emma wears bow jacket, rosette top, pants and black ballerina croc by @simonerocha_ and Trinity necklace by @cartier
In our latest issue, author Lamorna Ash speaks to Worms’ Arcadia Molinas about the edges of faith, and what the author learned as she investigated Christianity for her latest book, ‘Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion’.💒
They talk about the implications of the quiet religious revival happening all around us – how the far-right has co-opted the language of religion, the many elastic interpretations of the Bible, and how conversion, like falling in love, is ultimately a linguistic act. 💘
One of Ash’s essential observations is that many people come to faith through grief, finding, within the structures of religion, comfort, solace, and a community that is ready to hold you through life’s most trying moments. They talk about the rituals of faith that accompany us in subtle ways and allow us to remain porous in the face of life’s adversities.
The new issue of Worms is available to purchase now. 📚 Dive into the conversation exploring contemporary attitudes towards faith, Christianity, and that juicy word ‘forever’ in Worms 11: Faith & Worship. Get your copy on our online shop🌻🏃♀️
It was v cool to be profiled by The New York Times today. The best thing about it was getting to meet &, in so doing, learn from the craft of @emmabgee & also to meet @jonowhite_
