Ben Graham is an author, music journalist, poet, magician, cultural historian, artist and performer. He writes regularly for Shindig! magazine and The Quietus website. He is currently working on American Underground, an epic novel in five parts, described as a psychedelic odyssey through the twentieth century’s magical counterculture. The first part, an occult reimagining of the January 1967 Human Be-In that gave birth to the Summer of Love, is titled Electric Tibet and was completed in 2023. Interested publishers or agents please get in touch.
Ben’s previous books include A Gathering of Promises: The Battle for Texas’s Psychedelic Music, from the 13th Floor Elevators to the Black Angels and Beyond (Zero Books, 2015), an account of the rise of Texan psychedelic rock in the 1960s. The book was launched at the Levitation Festival in Austin in May 2015, where the legendary 13th Floor Elevators played a one-off 50th anniversary reunion show. The book received acclaim from Uncut, Mojo, The Wire, Record Collector and Caught By The River among other publications, with excerpts appearing on The Quietus, in Shindig magazine and in Optical Sounds fanzine.
In 2017 Bleeding Cheek Press began publishing Ben’s Discordian Science Fiction novel Amorphous Albion in the form of 5 connected novellas, each in a limited edition of 23 copies. A multi-media adaptation of the first book, Amorphous Albion: A Warp in Progress, was performed live at the 14-Hour Super Weird Happening in Liverpool on April 1, 2017, where it shared a bill with Alan Moore and Jamie Reid among others. In 2018, Ben, the Hove Space Arkestra and digital artist Shardcore were invited to stage Amorphous Albion as part of the Glasgow International art festival.
Amorphous Albion was published in full by Bleeding Cheek Press on January 23, 2018. Another music book, Scatological Alchemy: A Gnostic Biography Of The Butthole Surfers (Eleusinian Press) followed in March. In August 2020 Bleeding Cheek Press published Pink Floyd Are Fogbound In Paris: The Story of the 1970 Krumlin Festival. This sold strongly through word of mouth and attracted widespread interest from assorted national media publications and ITV North.
In 2021, to mark Ben’s 50th birthday, Bleeding Cheek Press published Strange Decade: The Bedside Ben Graham, Music Journalism & More, 2009-2019, a collection of his best journalistic work, in a limited edition hardback of 50 copies. This sold out within a few days.
Ben Graham previously wrote for the Stool Pigeon music paper and was a contributing regional editor for The Fly magazine. He launched Bleeding Cheek Press with two autobiographical novels, Nowhere to Go (2010) and We Are The Bad Rabbits And We Shall Overcome (2011). In the late nineties his first short story was featured in the notorious ‘chemical generation’ anthology Disco Biscuits, where he was the only previously unpublished author to feature alongside the likes of Irvine Welsh, Martin Millar, Alex Garland, Alan Warner, etc.
Ben is the co-host (with Verity Spott) of Horseplay, a monthly poetry & performance night at the Black Dove in Brighton. He is also a director of Notwork 23, the international Discordian co-operative that put on Festival 23 in 2016 and continues to promote events and counter-cultural chaos around the country. He was born on the cusp of George Harrison and Mungo Jerry with T-Rex rising, and grew up in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire. He lives in Brighton. Current Bleeding Cheek Press publications can be purchased from the shop. You can also buy me a pot of Earl Grey and maybe a small cake at Ko-Fi
Bleeding Cheek Press 