The Evening Party, coming soon

an introduction

Something has been brewing and I think you knew it.

THE EVENING PARTY, my second poetry/prose collection, is coming to you on September 1, 2024.

Crafting this book from the very essence of my being, wallowing in strangers’ worlds as well as my own, feels like all I have ever known. SEASHORE was the baby, compiled of years of poetry written in my youth, slowly starting to understand the makings of the outside workings, and my inner world. THE EVENING PARTY is partly fictional, an exploration of both storytelling and processed feelings, merged into tiny stories and moments. The most enjoyable combination that the narrator and poet and people watcher in me has strived for; the fun part for me is that you’ll never know which parts are fictional, and which are not.

The writings in this book have been curated and conceptualised over the last 3 years that I have been participating #Escapril, writing short fiction for myself, and typing away on my laptop in a London coffee shop or on a typewriter in my living room.

The strangers attend an evening party.
The strangers don't know each other.
The strangers hardly know themselves.

The Evening Party is a series of prose and poems, unveiling hidden stories of strangers brought together for the same rooftop party in London.

They are each riddled with the anxieties of modern age, the complexities of love, the challenges of dysfunctional families and other intricate relationships, and a pervasive sense of being trapped in their own existence.

This collection reveals a poignant tapestry of human connection and isolation. The Evening Party unveils the extraordinary in the mundane, breathing life into the passage of time and the memories that define us. The Evening Party is a mirror, an usher, and a reminder to savour moments that otherwise slip through our fingers unnoticed. 

It feels so special to be sharing this book soon, and to have you, my dear readers, to look forward to holding it. Because you’ve been here since the start. Or since SEASHORE. Or since CAFÉ AT 46 OLD STREET. Or since a poem of mine on Tiktok surprisingly went viral. I am honoured all the same. I am even more so honoured that you are here with me, to experience this release together.

View more information at:

hannahcao.co.uk/the-evening-party

Add the book to your To-read on Goodreads here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217539980-the-evening-party

I love you an impossible amount, which is to say I am fuming with gratitude and affection for those who have been supportive of me, and so patient with me during my many-splendid creative endeavours.

Ah, we’re an ungrateful race! When I look at my hand upon the window sill and think what pleasure I’ve had in it, how it’s touched silk and pottery and hot walls, laid itself flat upon wet grass or sun-baked, let the atlantic spurt through its fingers, snapped blue bells and daffodils, plucked ripe plums, never for a second since I was born ceased to tell me of hot and cold, damp or dryness, I’m amazed that I should use this wonderful composition of flesh and nerve to write the abuse of life. Yet that’s what we do. Come to think of it, literature is the record of our discontent.
— The Evening Party, Virginia Woolf

 ‘Just imagine,’ he began, ‘and it always happens like this. Today, as I was going downstairs to take a short walk before the evening party, I couldn’t help being surprised by the way my hands were dangling about in my cuffs, and they were doing it so gaily. Which promptly made me think: Just wait, something’s going to happen today. And it did, too.’

— ‘Description of a Struggle’, Franz Kafka