• Boy Friends

    by Michael Pedersen
    Price $23.95
    Hardcover
    In Stock
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    Boy Friends

Michael Pedersen and Hollie McNish at Harvard Book Store

presenting

Boy Friends

Date

Sep
28
Wednesday
September 28, 2022
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes prize-winning Scottish poets MICHAEL PEDERSEN and HOLLIE MCNISH for a discussion of Pedersen's new memoir Boy Friends.

A Return to In-Person Events

Harvard Book Store is excited to be back to in-person programming. To ensure the safety and comfort of everyone in attendance, the following Covid-19 safety protocols will be in place at all of our Harvard Book Store events until further notice:

  • Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth.

About Boy Friends

Ever feel like you were fated to be friends with someone? An alchemy in your meeting, instant fondness – part chemical, part kismet. This is how I’ve felt about every friend I’ve fallen in love with – none so much as you.

In 2018, Michael Pedersen lost a most cherished friend soon after their collective voyage into the landscape and luminosity of the Scottish Highlands. Sitting at a desk at The Curfew Tower, Northern Ireland, Michael begins to write to his departed friend – Scott Hutchison. What starts as a love letter to one magical, coruscating human soon becomes a paean to many friendships – perhaps all friendship.

In Boy Friends, Pedersen confronts the bewildering process of grief. As memories rise to the surface – both heart-wrenching and hilarious – he recalls his younger self: the overly sensitive boy growing up in working-class Edinburgh; his befuddling stint in an ancient collegiate university; a short-lived, combustible career as a lawyer; and, foremost, the gorgeous male friendships that have transformed his life.

Written to glitter, with intoxicating energy, Boy Friends is a powerful depiction of friendship and loss, a homage to the beauty of moments shared.

Praise for Boy Friends

"With a dazzling and inventive use of language...this sweetly unconventional work...whilst dripping in raw grief is uncommonly romantic, irreverent and at times laugh out loud funny. A delight really. And that’s that." —Shirley Manson

"Those hungry for the bone-deep truth about grief will devour Michael Pedersen's account of a friend lost . . . a dazzling act of generosity and an entirely original blast of non-fiction." —Terri White

"Michael writes with true sensitivity and power . . . he is a master of words; he plays them like music." —Kae Tempest

Hollie McNish
Hollie McNish

Hollie McNish

Hollie McNish is a poet and author based between Glasgow and Cambridge. She won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir Nobody Told Me. She has published four further collections of poetry: Papers, Cherry Pie, Plum and Slug and other things I’ve been told to hate, which became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller. She has recently completed a re-imagining of Sophocles’ Greek Tragedy Antigone, published by Hachette. Her poetry has been viewed many millions of times online and has been translated into German, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese and French.

Michael Pedersen
Michael Pedersen

Michael Pedersen

Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. His second collection, Oyster (2017), was a collaboration with Scott Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit). Pedersen has been named a Canongate Future 40, was a finalist in 2018 for Writer of the Year at the Herald Scottish Culture Awards, was awarded the John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature Award and won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie!, a prize-winning arts collective known for producing cutting-edge shows across Scotland and the world.

Photo Credit: Kat Gollock

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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