If you’re at a loose end in London this Thursday, why not come to the Red Army Fiction night at The Gallery Café, Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green?

The cover charge is a donation to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation and readers include Brian Kavanagh, Jo Eden and Percy Vera. Also, on at 10pm or thereabouts is Quietus Editor John Doran who is reading the first sentence of his debut novel. He hasn’t written it yet but promises that it will be so powerfully constructed that it will make everyone in attendance cry. And if it doesn’t he will repeat it until it does.

Doors open at 7.30pm, and there are open mic slots early on.