Sheffield Independent Publishers' Book Fair

Do drop by our stall if you are near Sheffield on 3rd November. There are also readings from our writers John Lucas, David Belbin and Danuta Reah while Liz Cashdan is taking part in a panel discussion. Not that we're trying to take over or anything.

New from Five Leaves, Student by David Belbin

Student is actually published on 24 September in paperback and 17 September as an ebook but our chums at Inpress Books have advance copies available now. Student is in the voice of a female student, and we follow her from West Kirby in her A-level year through three years of university in Nottingham. If we simply said she does not join the Christian Union, the amateur dramatic society and spend three years working hard for a 2.1 we'd only be scratching the surface. It's quite a journey, and - as the sub-title says - a lot can happen in three years. More if you follow the link: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/student/
Here's what Melvin Burgess said: "We have almost no university literature in the UK. David Belbin is ideally placed to help start it off, and this book is a valuable addition to the Young Adult range. Anyone who has been or is at university will relate to the characters. The full range of experiences from that first year after leaving home are all here - isolation, friendship, sex, loyalty, heartbreak, happiness, despair. Some succeed, some fail; of them struggle. The book is full of honesty and insight, and you never know until the very end who is going to make it and who is going to fall by the wayside."
The cover image is by Izza Maria Angeles who lives in the Philippines. This is the first time any of her images have been published, and it fits the book perfectly.

This week in books

It has been a busy seven days at Five Leaves Towers. On the Saturday we did a bit of basking in the glory of a big Guardian review of our 1948. I've already mentioned it on this site so instead I'll suggest you read this blog, by Charles Boyle, about Nicholas Lezard: http://sonofabook.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/patron-saint-of-small-presses.html.
The same day we had a book launch in Nottingham for Joanne Limburg's collection, The Oxygen Man. This was the first in an occasional series of joint events with Nottingham Poetry Society. I was up in Scotland at the time but our Pippa Hennessy(who is, handily, secretary of NPS) struggled through without me. The event was well attended and Joanne read well from a rather difficult book - difficult because it is about the suicide of her brother, a scientist and the "man" of the title.
Another good launch this week, which I was able to attend, was that of our writer and occasional editor David Belbin who, promiscuously, is published by other publishers too. In this case the launch was for his second "Bone and Cane" book with our friends at Tindal Street. What You Don't Know is, I think, the better of the two books - indeed, I think it is excellent, and the author is clearly getting into his stride in this series. Meantime, time to do some work on his Student, coming out from Five Leaves later this year. More on that to follow.
On Tuesday the first Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing took place. I'll post about this fully, soon. Suffice to say that my fellow trustees also managed to struggle through without me on the night. Maybe I don't need to actually go to anything ever again.
Just as well though that I did turn up at Lowdham Book Festival's First Friday event with the Nottingham writer AR Dance (the man who proves that some self published books are worth reading, as I introduced the session and did the tea for 60 people. These First Friday events have rather taken off. For family reasons I can't do much of the organising of Lowdham events this year, but my Lowdham colleague Jane Streeter looks quite calm about having the programme out in a couple of weeks for our summer events. One date I have set up though is the "Lowdham Lecture" on September 20th, with Alan Gibbons talking about "Libraries, Education and Literacy". More on that nearer the time.
Meanwhile, the proof for Michael Malone's novel Blood Tears has landed on my desk. We should have finished copies next week and, so far, it looks like it will get a lot of coverage in Waterstones branches in Scotland. We had some fun proof-reading the book as our internal and external proof-reader kept trying to change Scottish rhythms into standard English. No, kiddos, they really do speak like that in the West of Scotland.
We are carrying on turning backlist into e-books and this week - announcement imminent - we have turned our out of print travel title After the Gold Rush by John Stuart Clark into an e-book, which will please the mad cyclists of America who keep asking for it.
Finally, a couple  of pieces to read. Fresh from his geographically challenging pair of readings in Inverness and Berwick, J. David Simons has been interviewed by Scottish TV about his writing. Read that here:
http://local.stv.tv/glasgow/magazine/98186-theres-no-place-like-home-for-author-j-david-simons/
And, finally, in this weekly round up, here's a set of reviews in the Newcastle Journal that brings together reviews of poetry publications by three Nottingham presses, Candlestick, Shoestring and Five Leaves, together with books published by our  friends in the north, Iron Press and Smokestack whose editors are regularly published by Five Leaves. Long live this Midlands/North East twinning! Read them here: http://tinyurl.com/cgve3ag

This week in books

Like any job, publishing is full of small bits of unexciting detailed work that builds to a fulfilling life at the cutting edge of literature. That, at least, is what I keep telling myself when doing those bits of unexciting, detailed work. Not that I mind packing parcels for Amazon, a task so skilled that it can only be done by senior management at Five Leaves PLC. This week, however, has been exciting. On Tuesday I spent seven or eight happy hours on trains working on the first edit of Russel D McLean's next, third, novel, Father Confessor. We've already announced the book, signed a contract, designed the cover... and it is always a relief when manuscripts live up to their expectations. No slashing and burning required. In an earlier McLean manuscript I'd had fun tracking the route of every gun through the book as a shoot-out at the end seemed to have one firearm too many. No superfluous firearms in this book but it's still bloody dangerous to live in Dundee. McLean fans will be happy.
On the journey back, David Belbin's forthcoming Student lasted from Carlisle to Alfreton. This was my third read of the book, following some editorial changes by the author. There had been an interesting issue as one, now changed, chapter had previously included a lot of action around Second Life. How do you manage to make a novel about students read as current, when aspects of their behaviour pass so quickly? Nobody now uses MySpace, how many people have even heard of Second Life? Whatever students do now, or terms they use, will be out of date by publication date, which is challenging for authors and publishers.
The big local news is the new book of short stories by Jon McGregor, reviewed everywhere the last few days - This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You. One of the stories appeared earlier in the Five Leaves' anthology, Sea of Azov, so we can marginally bask in the acclaim. At the launch Jon revealed that if he'd had his way the book would have been called (I think it was) "I Bought You a Shovel". His publisher, Bloomsbury, thankfully squashed that idea, but wittily and usefully sent him a snow shovel as a present on publication day, so that the sender could add a note saying "I bought you a shovel".
The same evening author Rebecca Buck and editor Victoria Oldham from the American-based lesbian and gay publisher Bold Strokes were giving a talk at Nottingham Writers Studio on their experience writing for and editing a mid-size publishing house. It was hard not to regret the loss of so many of our lesbian and gay publishing houses, Sheba, Brilliance, GMP, Oscar's... when hearing how successful Bold Strokes are, and how mainstream they are too, being stocked in major bookstores. Here there is no discrimination against lesbian and gay writers being successful - think Alan Hollinghurst, Sarah Waters, Carol Ann Duffy - but outside of Gay's the Word you will rarely see lesbian and gay books in any quantity or labelled as such.
Bold Strokes will be at our States of Independence day in Leicester on March 17 and this week the programme went on line at http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/. I'll post later about States, but if you are withing striking, or stroking, distance of Leicester do make a date. In short it is a free book festival in a day, with seventy writers taking part, with its roots in the independent publishing sector.
This was the week the programme had to be finalised for Lowdham Book Festival's winter weekend, held over the first weekend in March. And it has, though it is not yet on line. The theme of the winter weekend is Local Heroes, and it includes an evening with the film-maker Billy Ivory as the highlight. Lowdham's winter weekends have always been on a more intimate scale than the summer festival (intimate being code for smaller), which suits us just fine. The date, for those who follow all things Lowdham, is, however, the usual date for our Flicks in the Sticks film weekend. Well, after ten years Flicks has gone dark. It may return, we hope so, but ten years was a good run and frees up some time to develop our winter mini-festival in the future. Lowdham also now runs a "First Friday" lecture series, with one of our regular speakers, Mike Wilson, yesterday having to cover the whole of Dickens' life and work in a hour. Easy, given his last challenge was to cover the whole of English Literature in an hour...
The week closed with National Libraries Day. That is something. Last year there were dozens of protest actions (including one organised by Five Leaves and UNISON) about library cutbacks, but the day has morphed into a day to celebrate libraries - and protest where necessary. Our local Nottingham Post included a good article in support of libraries, with short interviews with me from Five Leaves and our writers David Belbin and John Stuart Clark (the cartoonist Brick), together with some national figures including the ubiquitous Stephen Fry.
Except the week is not over yet. There are many emails to get through and - hurrah - tomorrow night the next order from Amazon arrives, telling me exactly which books I'll be packing on Monday morning. I'm looking forward to it already.

Kicking and screaming into the 21st century

Five Leaves has just published its first three e-books, each at £2.99. All three titles were previously published in paperback. J. David Simons' novels are set within the Jewish community in Scotland and though connected can be happily read as stand alone novels. The Pretender is a novel about literary forgery. This is new territory for us, and we are still learning. More of our backlist titles will follow. Click on the links below to find out more about the books. In due course they will appear on every platform, but at the moment they are only on kindle.

http://tinyurl.com/liberationofceliakahn, http://tinyurl.com/creditdraper, http://tinyurl.com/belbinpretender

What the papers say

Time for a round up of some recent press Five Leaves press coverage... The Thomas Hardy Society gives some nice coverage to our CD of C. Day-Lewis poems read by Jill Balcon. Both were vice-presidents of the Society. Indeed, both CDL and Jill are buried in Stinsford churchyard as is Hardy. Jill read the poems of both her late husband and Hardy at meetings of the Society and CDL read at the first Thomas Hardy Festival in 1968. Danuta Reah is picking up some coverage online for her Not Safe, the latest being at www.overmydeadbody.com/notsafe.htm. Her crime novella is based round the Sheffield refugee community, while David Belbin (who edited the book) has been interviewed in the Nottingham Post about his Five Leaves' refugee book Secret Gardens. You can read the interview at http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Contemporary-tale-kids-run-tackles-reluctance/story-13185924-detail/story.html. The North issue 47 includes reviews of both the John Lucas' books we published last year as well as a rare review of our Hull anthology, Old City, New Rumours. Several other occasional Five Leaves' writers appear in that issue but it is worth seeking out (from www.inpressbooks.co.uk) for the articles on "reflections on 25 years of poetry" by some movers and shakers and, especially, Jeremy Pointing on 25 years of Peepal Tree press. Our book that is getting most coverage at the moment though is Roman Nottinghamshire, with a lot more to come. This is also our best selling book too, with its own dedicated website on http://romannottinghamshire.wordpress.com/. Naturally, the best headline is found in LeftLion, which has an interview with the author Mark Patterson announced as "Venneh, viddeh, vicceh", translated as "I came, I saw, I went shopping". LeftLion also includes a piece from Five Leaves' worker Pippa Hennessy about her first year at Five Leaves Towers which includes: "You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned about working class life in Stratford (London), Butlins in the 1950s, being Jewish in Glasgow during and after World War I, the life and times of Ray Gosling, and sodding fairies..." http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/the-five-leaves-diary/id/3864

Lowdham Book Festival

Regulars here, and anyone who knows Five Leaves will be aware that I jointly organise Lowdham Book Festival in Nottinghamshire, now entering its twelfth year - see http://www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk/ - with Jane Streeter from The Bookcase in Lowdham. This year's Festival runs from 14 June - 14 July and includes about 40 events featuring 60 or so writers. This year's stars include John Simpson, Kate Morton and Gervaise Phinn, but they are all sold out already - in Simpson's case that means selling out a 450 seater in one week. We programme late and quickly and, unlike most book festivals, we release the programme about four weeks in advance, finishing the programming sometimes about one day or even on the day the presses roll. Don't think I am kidding. Jane is busy running her bookshop (this year and next also being President of the Booksellers Association) and I'm busy with Five Leaves so it suits our schedules to work that way. Scary though. A couple of years ago, being our tenth year, we had 65 events over ten days and a full programme for children. Boy, that was fun. It really was. One year we postponed printing the programme, feeling we were not there yet, and one week later did the same again. On the absolute last weekend we could possibly have printed and distributed the programme we booked three major acts which were the making of the Festival and people got barely any notice. That year our attendance was the biggest to date.

John Simpson, Kate Morton and Gervaise Phinn are hardly Five Leaves' writers and we do keep a curtain between the press and the Festival to avoid being seen as too self-serving though naturally we use our contacts, as Jane uses hers, and if it feels appropriate we programme Five Leaves' writers about as much as we would similar writers from any local publisher. This year, for example, Mark Patterson gives his first proper talk on Roman Nottinghamshire, John Lucas dusts off his talk on England in the 1950s, Danuta Reah represents the Crime Express lot and some other writers - David Belbin especially - are published by us but are speaking to their work with other publishers. The Festival also provides the venue for the first East Midlands' Book Award which Jane and I (and John Lucas and David Belbin) have set up and act as trustees for, with Ian McMillan chairing the judging panel. The winner gets £1000 and the shortlist has been promoted as widely as we could. We're not the judges though, and no Five Leaves' or Shoestring (run by John Lucas) writers, Bookcase contacts or graduates of the MA in Creative Writing (run until recently by David Belbin) are on the shortlist. Honestly, you ask the judges to act completely independently without fear or favour and then they do! What sort of world are we living in?

If you can only make Lowdham on one day, come on 25th June. We have a huge book fair, an all day cafe, a full children's programme and 16 events for adults. That day, all events are free and a we put up a pile of marquees to host talks and stalls. Traditionally that is mostly one of my programming days so we have talks on the Moomins and philosophy, anarchism for beginners and on Shelley, but this year Jane has sneaked in talks on the footballer Tommy Lawton (he used to run a pub on Main Street) and invited Jasper Fforde whose auntie lives in the village. I'm not complaining. We also have some talks over the festival on music - Rob Young on visionary music, Graham Jones on the last of the record shops and Ian Clayton on "Bringing it all back home". With the local Warthog Promotions we have live music too - Barbara Dickson and The Demon Barber Roadshow. All part of the fun, and while Barbara Dickson has written a book we never worry too much about that, and the Festival has included early music, rock music, classical music and Indian music. Nobody ever asked why Kiki Dee has appeared twice at the Festival, with not a book in sight. What is important to us is that we provide a platform for our local talent as well as provide entertainment or inspiration from "national" figures. And we can be a bit cranky, hence a talk on Buddhist meditation and a Byron bicycle trip. I should point out that Jane booked the former! Our first step into "inner life".

Ambit then (see previous posting for reasons)

Ambit has been going a long time for a little mag, since 1959 to be exact. It may be the only literary magazine started by a paediatrician, the doc in question being Martin Bax. Over the years the editorial team has included Carol Ann Duffy, Geoff Nicholson and JG Ballard. Since its inception, or at least as long as I can remember (which is not the same thing) Ambit has carried art, poetry, reviews and short fiction. There are some lit mags which carry short fiction but you get the impression the fiction is not central, but it is central in Ambit. Five Leaves has published quite a lot of David Belbin's stories that were first seen in Ambit and I'm pleased that the current issue (203) includes a few poets we've anthologised, and one novelist we've published. The latter, Carl Tighe, is an Ambit regular but in this issue his poetry appears. In the interests of transparency the current issue also includes a review of one of our John Lucas books, but it is Jim Burns - who has been appearing in all the best little mags forever. Other favourite regulars from the little mags include Alexis Lykiard and Helena Nelson.

The other thing I like about Ambit is that it includes a reasonable selection of a writer's work, in this issue a set of Fred Voss's industrial worker poems and a sequence by Judith Kazantzis.

Also in the interests of transparency, or something, I have to say the artwork in the current issue is not to my liking. Indeed Mike Foreman, the art editor's taste is not usually mine. But what do I know about art? This posting is illustrated by a back issue cover I do like.

Conclusion - Ambit is a good, solid read, grounded in the small press movement but with links in the bigger world. It is good on short fiction, loyal to its writers and is not a dedicated follower of fashion. If I liked the artwork more I'd be keener still, but I'm not suggesting any change since the strong editorial line and consistency shows the team knows what it is doing. Individual copies cost £8, subs £28, http://www.ambitmagazine.co.uk/. 96 pages, quarterly.

Library day, Beeston

So that was it then, for now. The national day of action on libraries. Down our way 400 people attended a mass borrow-in and read-out in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. Five Leaves organised the read-out with some "friends of the press", at the request of UNISON, which organises the library staff. We were very pleased with the numbers attending as we had no idea in advance how many people would turn up. Beeston Library itself has only a small cut in hours in the scheme of things, but everyone seemed to understand it was not just about Beeston, or Nottinghamshire, but about library cuts in Doncaster, the Isle of Wight and Warwickshire... and the culture in which we live. We all have to play a part. One super opener for my contribution was supplied by the Morning Star which, yesterday, had a big article about celebs coming out against library cuts, including Alan Bennett and Kate Moss. This was illustrated by a nice picture of Bennett and Moss, the latter showing a healthy amount of chest for such a cold time of year. Kate Moss, the friend of arch-tax avoider Philip Green? Libraries? Sure; the article said she had previously been involved in this. To save you trouble I can tell you that if you google Kate Moss and library you get something about the "Leather Library" and hot pants. I can assure you I did not read further. However if you add an "e" and google Kate Mosse and library you get lots and lots of entries. Mosse with an "e" is pretty well known in the book world. Thanks to the read-out gang: David Belbin, Kathy Bell, Helen Henry, Eve Makis, Deirdre O'Byrne and Sue Ward

Flying Goose migration

The Shoestring Press readings at the Flying Goose in Beeston, Nottingham will finally draw to a close in March. This series of mostly, but not exclusively, poetry readings has been running for about seven or eight seasons. John Lucas, the organiser (and a Five Leaves' writer), has not kept the programmes, nor have I. Perhaps someone has. You may not have heard of the series - not surprising as a balance always had to be made between getting enough people along and too many since the venue holds 36 people. There was a famous occasion when 64 turned up, though when people breathed out at the half time break some attendees were propelled through the front door. Over the years the Goose has become a fixture on the small press scene - many, perhaps most, of those attending have been writers, publishers, teachers or organisers of literature, but new people have always been welcome. Most of the Five Leaves' writers from the region, and some from outside the region, have read there. The two last events in the current format are on Tuesday 15 February and 15th March at 7.30pm, the first with Five Leaves/Tindall Street writer David Belbin reading with fellow novelist Thomas Legendre, the series ending with readings by poets Ann Atkinson, a former editor of Staple, and Alan Baker, the founder/publisher of Leafe Press.

The Flying Goose readings will, however, continue in the hands of the poet Sarah Jackson (pictured), a Flying Goose regular since moving to Nottingham, but not under the Shoestring Press banner.

Thanks to John Lucas, and to all the writers who've produced some great nights over the years.

Cover versions

Well, we published the third of these, the cover being a subtle mock up of a non-existent magazine with Grahame Greene on the front. The book is about literary forgery. It is now in three foreign language editions... German, Hebrew and Italian. The Hebrew one is, um, interesting.

"Keep beavering away" - Stanley Middleton 1919-2009, a celebration

Tamar Hodes, one of the speakers at the Nottingham celebration of the life of Stanley Middleton repeated this (a variation on the less polite army version), his advice to her as a young writer some 27 years ago, in describing how Stanley took her under his wing in Cambridge, leading to so many years of correspondence. Various of us read from or commented on his literary work, or talked about his life outside of the book world. Paul Binding gave a critique of some titles, which will certainly drive me to read or reread the ones he discussed. We were accompanied by songs from Caroline Danks, one of his grandchildren. The highlight of the day for me though was Philip Davis reading a section from Stanley's last novel, A Cautious Approach, to be published this August by Hutchinson. Philip read, wonderfully, a very moving passage about a son and father relationship, a difficult relationship. I hope the rest of the book, Stanley's 46th I think, will be as good. The event was largely organised by David Belbin and supported by both Nottingham universities, Five Leaves, Writing East Midlands and The Bookcase. The celebration was fully booked, the audience largely from an older generation of readers and those who had known Stanley from his teaching days and from his church as well as from his writing. A very fitting occasion.

Stanely Middleton 1919-2009: a celebration

The handsome chap with the sideburns and the book collection is Stanley at the time he was joint winner of the Booker Prize for Holiday.
Five Leaves and others, in cooperation with the Middleton family, are organising a celebration of his life, 2.00-4.30 on Saturday May 8th at the Djanogly Lecture Theatre, Lakeside, University of Nottingham NG7 2RD.
Stanley lived in Nottingham all his life, save for his war service. He worked as an English teacher yet still wrote a published novel nearly every year from 1958 onwards.
The celebration will include live music from Stanley's granddaughter, the soprano Caroline Danks, accompanied by Nicholas Danks on piano. There will be readings from his published work, unpublished letters and his poetry.
For a period Stanley's Holiday was on Five Leaves' list before reverting to Hutchinson. We had re-issued it for his 80th birthday together with the festschrift Stanley Middleton at Eighty. There are still a few copies of the latter available. Only on typing this did I realise that all the speakers and readers at the celebration have been regularly or occasionally published by Five Leaves, including David Belbin, John Lucas, Sue Dymoke, Barry Cole, Philip Davis and Tamar Hodes, while Paul Binding is currently working on a commission for the press. That is rather pleasing.
For further information and to reserve a place see http://tiny.cc/middleton. All are welcome to attend. There will be refreshments and the event is free.