Three Minute Epiphany

Writer Sabrina Mahfouz is this month's Slow Readers Book Club. She'll be discussing her latest play at the Royal Court - A History of Water in the Middle East

Sabrina, who is British Egyptian, grew up with ambitions of being a spy but was turned down by MI6. After turning her attention to writing she has won numerous awards and has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Sabrina is the editor of 'The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write' and is currently editing a new creative anthology Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen which includes contributions from the likes of Riz Ahmed and Maxine Peak and a children's poetry anthology Poems From a Green and Blue Planet both of which will be out in early October. She is also currently writing a biopic of the legendary 'Godfather of Grime', Wiley.

Mary Anne is joined by Norwegian experimental songwriter and novelist Jenny Hval. Jenny presents a 3 Minute Epiphany on the practice of love.

The title of this 3 Minute Epiphany is also the title of Jenny's latest album and Valie Export’s 1985 film of the same name, which in part inspired the record.

We asked Jenny about the exploration of love in art in poetry and as a way of broadening her own writing practice.

Using the pop song format to attempt to make sense of what love and care actually mean, Jenny explores Love across her new record, saying of the album “Love as a theme in art has been the domain of the canonized, big artists, and I have always seen myself as a minor character, a voice that speaks of other things...But in the last few years I have wanted to take a closer look at the practice of otherness, this fragile performance, and how it can express love, intimacy, empathy and desire.”

We have a 3 Minute Epiphany from US based musician and producer, Salami Rose Joe Louis. Her new album 'Zdenka 2080' was released via Brainfeeder on the 30th of August 2019.

The album draws it's inspiration from film, literature, art, and music, and was heavily influenced in particular by a series of apocalyptic sci-fi novels by Octavia Butler and Gene Wolf.

Salami Rose Joe Louis. (real name Lindsay Olsen) says that the books: "inspired me to explore the realms of fantasy as a means of illuminating concepts and truths about our own society and humanity.”

As a result 'Zdenka 2080' describes a future dystopian Earth in the year 2080 that has been mis-managed by unethical governments and corporations. An initiative by greedy big business to capture solar energy to power a super-sized spaceship, results in a rapidly cooling Earth, and the elite escape via the spaceship to colonize another distant planet. The earthlings left behind find themselves fading with the cooling sun.

The Grammy winner has worked with Kendrick Lamar, Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu and Questlove,

Throughout his career, Glasper has won won 3 Grammy’s and an Emmy award. He has also worked as a producer on 'Miles Ahead', the biopic film based on the life of Miles Davis.

His breakthrough album was 2012's "Black Radio" which won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, which was followed by 2014's "Black Radio 2". But Glasper stepped fully into the spotlight thanks to his prominent role on Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp A Butterfly"

What is art? Beck Hansen, who comes from a family of great artists, tries to explain...