You are invited to the book launch of Outward Bound from Liverpool: Reading Malcolm Lowry by poet, writer and LJMU creative writing lecturer Helen Tookey.
Tuesday 8th September 2026
The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX
6.00-7.30pm (pre-talk drinks from 5.30pm)
Weaving together literary criticism, memoir and place-writing, the book takes the reader on an immersive journey through the landscapes – textual and geographical, remembered and reimagined – of Wirral-born novelist, poet and short-story writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–57).
Moving through the various terrains of Lowry’s life and work – Liverpool and the Wirral; Dollarton in British Columbia; the archive of his work; and the richly textured, symbolic landscapes of his writing itself – the book offers a compelling, lyrical and often moving account of a sustained engagement with a writer and what it can enable.
Outward Bound from Liverpool also pays tribute to the humour, beauty and passion of Lowry’s writing, his deeply felt sense of place, and his prescient concern for the natural world. It explores how reading can change us and shows why Lowry is a writer still very much for today.
Helen will read from her book, and be in conversation with the Bluecoat’s Director of Cultural Legacies, Bryan Biggs, with whom she collaborates on the arts centre’s annual Lowry Lounge celebration of the writer.
Helen Tookey is Reader in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press: Missel-Child (2014), City of Departures (2019) and In the Quaker Hotel (2022). She is also the co-editor, with Bryan Biggs, of Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World (Liverpool UP, 2009) and Remaking the Voyage: New Essays on Malcolm Lowry and In Ballast to the White Sea (Liverpool UP, 2020).
“A generous and open-minded literary adventure.” – Iain Sinclair.
This event is presented by the Smithdown Litfest and RILCH (Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University).