Date: Wednesday, 20th of May

Location: Round Table Books CIC, 10-11 Granville Arcade, Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8PR (next to Honest Burger)

Time: 18:30 - 21:00

The ticket price is redeemable for a copy of Black Fish on the night.

Join the multi-talented Speech Debelle and Brixton legend Cyndi Handson in conversation about Speech Debelle’s book Black Fish: How to fish, and stories of the wata, kin & community

Speech’s story offers a unique perspective that inspires you to find inner peace within life’s tumultuous currents and become a steward of our abundant oceans.

Using fishing as a metaphor for personal growth, healing, and belonging, Black Fish is a captivating blend of a practical fishing guide, an intimate memoir, and a cultural reflection, written by the multitalented musician Speech Debelle. Lyrically woven across an array of practical fishing advice – from chosen equipment and casting techniques to weather considerations and mindfulness – each chapter interlaces interviews and stories by seasoned anglers with Speech’s reflections on community, identity and finding one’s roots. Fishing can be a practice of healing from trauma.

Understand how to trust the process, have grace with yourself and break emotional cycles. Learn about fishing as an indigenous practice and ancestral skill. Through stories of the movement of peoples across water, see how and why the fishing practices have evolved with them.

Speech Debelle has been making waves since her debut album Speech Therapy won the Mercury Prize, making her the first female rapper to do so. Speech finished as a semi-finalist on Celebrity MasterChef in 2013. Her latest studio album, Sunday Dinner on a Monday, weaves a personal narrative of family, lineage and belonging – reflecting Speech’s social conscience and activism as exemplified by her community initiative “Black Fish”, whose mission is to preserve and celebrate our ancestral history with the water by empowering individuals to connect with nature through the art of fishing.

Cyndi Anafo, aka Cyndi Handson, is a multipotentialite DJ, cultural events producer, and co-director of Peckham Palms, a Black female-led creative space rooted in community, entrepreneurship, and cultural expression. Her work sits at the intersection of music, place-making, and advocacy, championing spaces where Black creativity can thrive on its own terms.

Books and refreshments from Round Table’s Bar will be available for purchase on the night.