The Slits Viv Albertine in conversation

Viv was the guitarist with the British cult post-punk band The Slits - going on to become a key player in counter culture before her career in TV and film directing.Her first solo album The Vermilion Border was released in 2012, and her memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys was a Sunday Times, Mojo, Rough Trade and NME Book of the Year in 2014, as well as being shortlisted for the National Book Awards.Every memoir is a battle between reality and invention, but in her follow-up to Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv has reinvented the genre with her unflinching honesty. To Throw Away Unopened is a fearless dissection of one woman's obsession with the truth about family, power and her identity as a rebel and outsider. It is a brutal expose of human dysfunctionality, the impossibility of true intimacy, and the damage wrought upon us by secrets and revelations, siblings and parents.Yet it is also a testament to how we can rebuild ourselves and come to face the world again. It is a portrait of the love stories that constitute a life, told with an inimitable blend of humour, vulnerability and intelligence that makes Viv Albertine one of our finest authors working today.