Join us for a brilliant evening with Poppy T. Perry, discussing her fantastic debut Dead Real. Grab your zom-stompers and a spare pair of pants, shit’s about to get real… Poppy will be in conversation with Cheddar Gorgeous.About the BookNora Inkwell is totally, completely, absolutely going to tell her best friend and fellow horror movie superfan, Ruby, that she’s in love with her. It doesn't matter that Baxter from Body Combat wrote on the college wall that Nora's frigid. Or that Ruby is more interested in losing her lesbian v-plates before they start university. And it certainly doesn't matter that Nora's old school friends said that all bisexuals are attention-seeking wannabes!... It might matter that the entire town has turned into flesh-eating zombies.Guess there's no time like the (deadly, dangerous, zombie-swamped) present to confess your *undying* love.About the AuthorPoppy (she/her) is a magnet to anything fast-paced and playful. She collects chaos like a magpie collects shiny things. This creates a fun chaotic energy that is a key element in her Young Adult storytelling. When not writing, Poppy can be found reading YA novels, comics, or drawing while listening to REALLY LOUD MUSIC. Poppy has come out as queer more times than she cares to remember but found she kept being shoved back into the closet. Each time she had to build up the courage to climb out again, and it was exhausting. The last time Poppy came out, she took an axe to her own personal closet and smashed it to splinters before setting it alight, just for good measure. The resulting desire to break down heteronormative worldviews and help others find the confidence to live their best life is at the heart of her work. Poppy lives as a landlocked mermaid in the West Midlands, taking every opportunity to run away to the coast. She also works as a consulting artist and art technician at a sixth-form college, where she loves helping young creatives.About the ChairCheddar Gorgeous (A.K.A Dr Michael Atkins), is a Drag performer, visual artist and academic based in Manchester. He is a founding member of Manchester’s monthly home of the fabulous, Cha Cha Boudoir, and defines himself on Instagram as a Unicorn and super-hero and idealist. In his performance work, Cheddar is particularly interested in disrupting the gender conventions often inherent in UK drag, by mixing and playing with signifiers of masculine and feminine beauty. Cheddar believes that drag has potential beyond a form of entertainment, to be a social and political tool which engenders community growth, furthers the work of charities and social causes and is a shifting space where all manner of identities, feelings and experiences can be expressed. His doctoral work in anthropology focused on the spatial multiplicity of contemporary urban gay villages and incorporated the use of graphic novella as a form of ethnographic storytelling.Cheddar brings to the discussion an interest in how drag can allow us to look at beauty beyond gender, as a form of creative becoming through which people can transform different facets of their identity, their flesh and even their species.