Iron Press at Forty - the festival

From time to time I give talks on independent publishing. I often draw on the story of David Almond. David was a writer of short stories, often based on his own North East working class background. He was not the most successful writer of short stories, though he was regularly published in small literary magazines and even broadcast on the BBC. In 1985 Peter Mortimer's Iron Press published a collection of his short fiction. It sold modestly. Twelve years later Iron Press published a second collection of stories. It sold modestly. David's next book was Skellig, which became an international commercial best seller. At the fortieth birthday festival for Iron Press David launched a third collection of short fiction for Iron, Nesting, which included many of the early Iron stories and some new material. In the book he gives credit to Iron Press for its early support for his work, a support which kept him going, kept him in print and thus enabled David to become an internationally known writer. The introduction to Nesting should perhaps be read by every Arts Council administrator, owners of bookshop chains and reviewers of books. It might change their mind on the value of small presses.
There were 200 people at that launch reading, and the next day there were 200 people at a discussion of, and reading from, the 1991 Iron collection The Poetry of Perestroika. The book was introduced by Jackie Litherland, with readings by local actor and activist Charlie Hardwick. It was one of the best readings I've attended, with people listening with great attention to Jackie's tales of how the poems were sourced and received, the tour to Russia by North East poets and the tour to the North East of Russian poets. The event, and Charlie's readings, brought to life a collection that marked such a change in the lives of Soviet citizens and writers. 200 people, listening to poems translated from Russian, first published twenty-two years ago! And all in a community centre in a small fishing village - Cullercoats, home to Iron Press for the forty years.
Few small presses last forty years, only the recently retired Tony Rudolph's Menard Press comes to mind. If Five Leaves lasts that long I will be 82 - though Peter is knocking on a bit. Not that you would know, from his boundless energy and enthusiasm, his rattle of bangles and bright clothes. Five Leaves is pleased to have published half a dozen of his own books, but this weekend was all about Iron. And the arts community of the North East coast. There were few people from Newcastle itself - city folk! - but plenty from up and down the coast, from Durham, from rural Northumbria, and three from Nottinghamshire. I use the words arts community on purpose, because there were artists, luvvies, musicians, community activists as well as literary types. Plus which (to use one of Pete's own phrases) the events were generally a mixture of music and literature, with local bands playing ranging from an a cappella women's group to some very imaginative new folkies.
Peter tells something of the Iron story in Through the Iron Age, an A6 pamphlet. I wanted more, but this will have to do. You can order it through www.inpressbooks.co.uk or send Iron Press £3 and a copy will be yours.
I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend - including talking with editors from North East publishers Red Squirrel, Bloodaxe, Smokestack and fellow visitors Route as well as seeing Pete and his partner, the writer Kitty Fitzgerald. Fortunately I was stuck behind a bookstall so did not have to even  pretend I would have loved to have gone out to sea to write Haiku, one of the Iron Press Festival's oddest moments. But the sea was too rough and the sea Haiku trip was called off. Is this the first time a rough sea has ever cancelled a poetry event? There were other odd moments - it takes some doing to get lost in a fishing village in the middle of the night, but I did so ("I know the sea is here somewhere...") and it took two policepeople to help me buy a ticket at Cullercoats Metro on leaving so that I did not have to commit the crime of travelling without a ticket. But I did get to see the sea, a bonus if you live in Nottingham normally, and in its honour, here's a photo of a boat taken at the beautiful house of my host for the weekend, Jill Clarke, Cullercoats' answer to Mrs Madrigal.

 

The Iron Age 1973-2013

If you are anywhere near the North East there is only one place to be between 15-19th May and that is at Cullercoats for "A seaside words and music festival" celebrating Iron Press's fortieth anniversary. Iron Press has been run since its inception by Peter Mortimer - he is also the author of five or six books published by Five Leaves. I well remember him in bookshop days in the '80s coming to Mushroom Bookshop in Nottingham with copies of Iron Magazine. He had more hair back then but his fashion sense remains the same, lots of rings, lots of bright reds, yellows and oranges, a hat with a haiku on it...
His home in Cullercoats is no less vivid. At one time his Marden Terrace home had a neon haiku on its roof and the kitchen has a wall covered in panels painted individually by dozens of north east artists. And it is the connections to other types of writers, musicians and artists that will make the Iron weekend "not your average literary festival".
Where else can you put to sea in a boat to write haiku (an Iron specialism) or find most of the readings followed or interspersed with musicians from the north east? The sea - predictably - plays a major part with events at the RNLI, the local fish and chip shop and the fishermen's mission. Though Peter will be introducing some events the weekend is about Iron, not him, but we'll be there throughout the weekend with his books on a bookstall and take part as much as we can get away - though perhaps skipping the Iron Press Snooker Tournament.
I know I'll come back with a few publications but these will include Nesting, a set of short stories by David Almond, published for the anniversary - David Almond's first two books were published by Iron - and Through the Iron Age - an editor's forty year journey, a pamphlet by Peter. The other writers involved in the weekend include Melvyn Bragg - published by Iron in 1975 and the former assistant editor of Iron magazine, the shy and retiring Ian McMillan.
Apart from Peter Mortimer, other Five Leaves writers appearing include Andy Croft, in a short reprise of his Iron Press Great North, a collection written for The Great North Run. Participants in a two and a half mile run on the seafront will be given a signed copy of the book. Good job I bought mine years ago. There are also a few authors who have appeared in Five Leaves' anthologies.
But compared to Iron, Five Leaves is a young whippersnapper, twenty-two years younger. When Iron Press started Ted Heath was Prime Minister and Margaret Thatcher was quite unknown.
It is quite something to run a small press for forty years. Well done Iron Press! Well done Peter Mortimer!

A class act

On Saturday in Nottingham there was a Five Leaves' event in support of the Saturday Night and Sunday Morning photographic exhibition in Nottingham. Over 100 people attended the half day discussion on "Alan Sillitoe, then and now" which focussed on issues of class. Six locally born working class writers - Peter Mortimer, Derrick Buttress, Elain Harwood, Nicola Monaghan, Alan Fletcher and Matthew Welton - discussed issues raised by the exhibition, working class culture in Nottingham, Alan Sillitoe's legacy and the influence of Alan's work, and Nottingham, on their own writing. Peter Mortimer set the scene in describing his own upbringing, among other things describing how his father tried to modify his accent as he moved from factory floor to golf club membership, trying to become middle-class. Derrick Buttress, now in his eighties, talked primarily about the first twenty-five years of his adult life during which he worked in a total of twenty factories, turning up at WEA evening classes in his boiler suit to find he was the only Worker there. Until then class gradations were within his class - those who had cars, those who worked in the pits - not between the working class and  middle class people ("We didn't know any - apart from teachers, doctors and factory owners - who we had nothing to with"). At school he'd been told that he'd never make anything of himself as was the case with Nicola, brought up on the same Broxtowe Estate. Except in her case this was in the 70s and 80s. She took great pleasure in sending the teacher who told her this a signed copy of her first novel. More astonishing was the story of Elain Harwood. Though she was there to show architectural slides about places of working class culture - football grounds, pubs, cinemas - she said that at her workplace (English Heritage) someone had suggested she take elocution lessons.
Returning to Sillitoe, Alan Fletcher drew out the similarities between Arthur Seaton and Mod culture, the subject of his three novels, when there was full employment and young people had money in their pocket, to be spent on dressing up well and on having a good time at the weekends. Alan and Peter Mortimer both have two pictures in the exhibition - Alan of Mods, of course, and Peter of a lads' day out in the Nottingham-on-sea resort of Skegness.
Matthew Welton concentrated on Alan Sillitoe's poetry and in the subsequent discussion began to raise issues of how the publishing industry is changing, allowing more and more people to write, in different ways, without the filter of publishers. He remarked that writers might get much smaller advances, but more people can now be writers.
A speaker from the audience - in discussing the future of working class writing - said that it was not working class writing that has vanished, but writing from the point of view of the industrial working class. Nicola agreed, saying that we still live in a world where some people control the means of production and others work for them and there is no reason why there can't be a great call centre novel. Peter Mortimer - ultimately agreeing with Alan Sillitoe's view that there is no working class writing, there is simply writing - argued that the writing that is important, and any subject can provide material.
The Saturday Night and Sunday Morning exhibition continues until February 10th. So far over 80,000 people have attended, a fantastic achievement for the Lakeside gallery.
I was pleased to organise this event, and to chair it. For me class - and the discussions around it - sit at the heart of my politics, my response to my reading and much of my thinking yet I rarely hear issues of class debated at book festivals and the like, but when the issue does arise it is rare to see a line up entirely made up of working class writers. Not that people all agreed with each other, but it was good to feel on home territory. 

The price of fish

Foreign Office, Peter Mortimer, Camp Shatila and Five Leaves

I can't say that I'm a great fan of British foreign policy on the Middle East normally, but I was very interested in this blog entry by Tom Fletcher, Britain's Ambassador to Lebanon. Our books and our authors don't usually reach such levels of course. Wonder if William Hague is reading Camp Shatila.

FCO Blogs > Tom Fletcher > SOLIDARITY AND SHATILA

SOLIDARITY AND SHATILA

November 29, 2012

I’ve blogged previously about our work with the Palestinian veterans who fought with us in World War II, and questions of history and justice.

Today is the Day of International Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Attention will rightly be focused on New York, where – just as Israel did in 1948 – Palestine is making its case to the UN for statehood. Whatever Ministers decide is our position, some will be disappointed. The key point though is that the UK approach has been guided throughout by the principle that we want to maximise the chance of the creation of a viable Palestine, living in security alongside Israel.

But far from the halls of the UN, I wanted to use Solidarity Day to highlight the Shatila Theatre Trust’s programme of artistic collaboration between British artists and the Palestinians of Shatila camp in Lebanon, and their artistic director Peter Mortimer’s new book ‘Camp Shatila’, which is full of insights from his time spent living and working in the camp. I met Peter and his ebullient and talented colleagues today. They are Brits doing brilliant work on the ground, showing real solidarity with camp residents whose story is as troubled as any in the region.

Beyond this, our team here are part of a sustained wider effort with the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee, the UN and Palestinian partners to improve the living conditions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, to prevent crisis and resolve conflict. As more and more Syrian refugees arrive, we should also remind ourselves that this situation cannot be permanent. After a wasted decade, we have to put our shoulder to the wheel of a just two-state solution. I hope that will be the real conclusion of the vote in New York, and of our solidarity.

New from Five Leaves: Made in Nottingham, by Peter Mortimer

The Tyneside writer Peter Mortimer is used to writing about difficult places. Against Foreign Office advice he wandered round Yemen. He set up a children's theatre group in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and, over one summer, walked the length of Britain with one dog and no money, dependent on the kindness of strangers to provide accommodation and food.
In this book, part memoir, part documentary and social commentary, he undertook a shorter journey, taking up residence in the same street he grew up in, on the Sherwood council estate in Nottingham. It was a journey of only 160 miles, but one which involved revisiting his previous Nottingham life, some fifty years back.
Often feeling like a ghost, or disembodied spirit, Peter Mortimer stalks the streets of his past, attempting to put it into the context of how he lives now, trying to make sense of the two times.His sojourn makes for an unpredictable, often comic, sometimes painful journey.
Themes of changing times, class and society are universal. Anyone who has returned to their childhood home, however briefly, will immediately identify with the feelings and contradictions so vividly portrayed.
Peter Mortimer is probably best-known for his book Broke Through Britain, recording his walk through Britain with no money and nowhere to stay. His has written other extreme travel books including Camp Shatila and Cool for Qat. He lives in the North East, where he runs Cloud Nine theatre company and Iron Press.
Made in Nottingham is available from bookshops soon or, post free, from: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/made-in-nottingham-a-writer-s-return/

Lowdham Book Festival 2012

The programme is now available, at www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk, where it can be viewed or downloaded. This is the thirteenth Festival, and though the programme is in the name of Jane Streeter and I, Jane has had to do most of the work this year. Every draft copy of the programme seemed to add another event or two. These range from a dog walk (there is a bookish reason, but nonetheless a rarity at book festivals - next year we go for the gerbil market) through to an evening with Ben Fogle. The Festival runs throughout June, with the last ten days being the core. Several Five Leaves "irregulars" put in an appearance - John Harvey, Jon McGregor, Chris Arnot, Stephen Booth, John Lucas, Alan Gibbons - but the only event dedicated to one of our books is Peter Mortimer talking about his new Made in Nottingham on 30th June.
Lowdham regulars will immediately notice that the traditional "last day" jamboree is not happening this year. This is largely because that has always been one of my jobs and I've not been around much, but it will return, refreshed, next year. Nevertheless the Festival includes 36 writers, 7 musicians, several craft workers, two storytelling troupes, one dog walker, six writers groups (in the fringe festival) and one rather large food festival.
Back in the mists of time, after the first Festival, we surveyed our public - did you want us to carry on with book festivals or would you prefer an arts festival? Opinion formers said "arts festival", but vox pop said "book festival". At the time such things were less common, and we concluded that people liked the prestige of a book festival, but were happy for us to cover other arts under that banner. So we've done theatre, film, early music, rock music, classical music, sports (OK, that isn't an art form, not even at my home town team of Hawick Royal Albert), and we've dabbled in food - but an all day food festival is new.
If you can't go to everything... my recommendation is our annual Readers Day (on June 30), with Jon McGregor performing his own man show based on This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You after which he will interview John Harvey. Oxygen Books is running a "City-Pick Nottingham" session, reading from local writers from the past and present. The whole day costs £20, which includes lunch, tea and coffee and a comp copy of McGregor or Harvey's latest hardback. A bargain. This annual day is being used as a model around the country.
I may not have had such a big hand in the Festival this year, but Pippa at the Five Leaves office did, designing and typesetting the programme.

North East literary history

Not for the first time do I find myself consumed by North East envy. Living in the East Midlands it is always hard to grasp our regional identity. Our patch covers Louth, in Lincolnshire  (try getting there by public transport) and King's Sutton, which is I think to the south of Oxfordshire but technically in Northamptonshire. I'll give a fiver to anyone who has every travelled between those two outposts.
The North East is easier to understand. In Fix This Moment: writers respond to North East literary history, joint editor Stevie Rennie remarks that the four areas making up the North East have in common their "industrial heritage, geographical isolation and the lilt to our voices". What the area also has is a strong independent publishing sector, reflected in this book from New Writing North (£6.99, 978 0 9558829 7 5) which is well worth reading by anyone interested in either the literature of the region or the small press scene. I would have liked to have seen a much bigger book, with more earlier  history and something about people's reading rather than the concentration on writing, but the book is still of great value. Michael Chaplin provides an personal record of his family's writing (he is the son of Sid Chaplin), Andy Croft (a Five Leaves regular) gives the history of writing in Middlesbrough, David Almond tells of the Panurge years, Ellen Phethean describes the women's writing scene, Neil Astley provides some material on Bloodaxe's history, Jackie Litherland goes through the exciting 35 years of the Colpitts poetry readings, another Five Leaves' regular Peter Mortimer describes his 40 years or so running Iron Press, Nolan Dalrymple provides an academic essay on David Almond and the book concludes with an essay on the Morden Tower venue by Stevie Rennie.
The other joint editor is Claire Malcolm, head of New Writing North, which is itself worthy of attention though I would not envy her going to work every day to their office in Holy Jesus Hospital in Newcastle.
The book could easily have had other chapters on, say, Jon Silkin and Stand and... so much more, but then I'd be really really jealous.

The film of the book, the dance of the book

Monday 5 March: 7.45pm
The Northern Rock Foundation Hall
The Sage Gateshead
Tickets: £10/£8.00
Info: 0191 443 5661, www.thesagegateshead.org
In the year of the 'Arab Spring', six artists from the North East travelled to the Middle East – their object, to create with young Palestinian refugees a play about the downfall of a long-ruling tyrant. The play, Croak The King and a Change in the Weather, put together on Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut played to great acclaim at Theatre Monnot in the mainly Christian East Beirut, before touring to three cities in the UK. The book Camp Shatila by Peter Mortimer (Five Leaves) is the beginning of the story.
‘Shatila Theatre’, is a remarkable documentary film, made by Primate Productions of Whitley Bay, which follows the rehearsals on camp, the Beirut production, then 3,000 miles to track the play through the UK (including performances at The Sage).
Also on view is the live stage show commissioned by Theatre Monnot to precede the film, and as yet unseen in the UK.
‘I Married the Angel of the North’ is a fusion of contemporary North East music, poetry and dance performed by The Creels, and the play’s author and poet Peter Mortimer. The book I Married the Angel of the North is published by Five Leaves.

Playtime with Mortimer

Five Leaves has never been too fussed if our writers, even our regular writers, bring out books with other publishers. Let a thousand flowers bloom, or something like that. I was pleased then when Playtime: eight plays for and with young people by Peter Mortimer (Flambard, £8.99 via www.inpressbooks.co.uk) popped through the post. Peter has written several books for Five Leaves and is currently working on a commission for a book about Nottingham but he also works with other publishers, particularly in the North East. The book is what it claims to be, eight playscripts mostly written with and by children and then performed. There is a Five Leaves connection in that one of the plays is the revised Croak, the King & a change in the weather written in Shatila, as part of his stay chronicled in our Camp Shatila. I spend my life avoiding children in practice while interested in education in theory, and found Peter's introduction interesting, basing his work in schools on ideas popularised in his adopted North East by Dorothy Heathcote. who "showed teachers how to use drama as a creative, holistic experience that widened the framework of the curriculum". He combined this theory with the practice of going into schools with an entirely and nerve challenging blank slate, not even thinking of what play might be created until he started talking to the children. Peter ends his introduction by saying that schools are welcome, at no charge, to use the playscripts and "If I'm around, I'll come and see the production."

From Shatila to Sherwood

Peter Mortimer's Shatila project, which has been covered here from time to time, is over for the moment. Once again he brought a group of Palestinian children to the North East (and Liverpool and Edinburgh), and prepared for the journey by the children, together with assorted artists from the North East, performing in Beirut. You can catch up with the project on: http://www.shatilatheatre.btck.co.uk/Home. This won't be the end of the project, but Peter will gracefully become less important, allowing others from his area to develop the Shatila project in his own way. Our book, Camp Shatila -a writer's journal is still available.
But what can you do after the excitement of Beirut, the squalor of Shatila, the difficult politics of the Middle East? The answer is, obviously, write a book about the Sherwood area of Nottingham. Peter was brought up here, just down the road from Five Leaves Towers. He played football for Basford United, Gedling Colliery Welfare and Arnold Town. He worked locally making false teeth before the call of being a writer grew too strong. So, fifty years on, he is back. Peter wrote to the current owner of the house he was brought up in asking if he could lodge there for a while. No - but he could lodge two doors up, so moving in with a bemused couple astonished to discover that they have a writer scribbling away in their back room, brewing up in the kitchen and telling tales of working with Palestinian children. Peter is wandering the streets of his old estate - the most desirable Council (and now, ex-Council) estate in Nottingham, proudly built in the 1920s. Some streets were built with allotments between them. What he will write, we can't say. There has been renewed interest in Estate life nationally over the last two or three years. This book should add to the interest. It will come out about a year from how, launched, no doubt, at the Sherwood Arts Festival.

Shatila again

Peter Mortimer, Kitty Fitzgerald and the rest of the Cullercoats crew have pulled it off again and are bringing another group of Shatila children to the North East, and, this time, the North West and Scotland. Thanks to all those who have or will raise money to make the trip possible, including Creative Scotland and UNISON North-West. The children will be coming in February 2011, together with four teachers, to perform Croak the King and a Change in the Weather, written by Pete and adapted by the children. And - those who have read our Camp Shatila will understand the exciting news that the children will also be performing at the Theatre Monnot in Beirut, a theatre which hitherto had no connection to the Palestinian refugees from Shatila. The logistics of the tour are great, but so are people like Paul Irwin at Eastcoast Taxis who will be ferrying the children round the UK and the Northumbria Hotel and Language School at Whitley Bay where the children will mostly be staying. A website is promised soon, but North Easterners might want to pencil in Feb 28-March 2 for the Sage performances or March 7-9 for the Saville Exchange in North Shields. More on this one nearer the time. But one query. The Shatila events and readings are usually packed, with great sales of the book, already in its second edition, but can we get interest from the book trade? Something is out of sinc.

The ones that got away

Every publisher has a short list of books they have either rejected, abandoned, ignored or disliked to find that the next publishers or the fifty-third publishers have taken the books on and done well with them. Is it really true that one publisher turned down Animal Farm because they didn't publish animal stories? No matter, we all do such things. And we all lose writers to other publishers and gain writers from other publishers. Peter Mortimer's Uninvited has popped through the post, nicely produced by newish kids on the north east block, Red Squirrel Press. Five Leaves has published more books by Mortie than any of our other writers, but, after long consideration and some editing we dumped this one, in the end thinking it was not right for our Crime Express list, which we had in mind. Pete did not go out and celebrate, particularly as he'd been writing and rewriting this novella for forty years and hoped it would come out before it reached pension age. It did, but not from us. New writers please note that some books do take forty odd years to find the right publisher. Pete and Five Leaves are still talking. Indeed, we've got a travel book by him planned further down the line. So we are pleased that Red Squirrel has published this clausterphobic story where a man comes home to find an uninvited guest sitting in his chair. He is unable to find out why the man is there, what his motives are or where he came from. It's a good little book and we hope Red Squirrel does well with it. We can add it to our list of books we'd passed over that then went on to do well. Copies are available from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/uninvited_peter_mortimer_i022068.aspx

Give that man a prize

Peter Mortimer is short-listed for the Arab British Culture and Society Award for the second year running, last year for his play RIOT (playscript published by Five Leaves) and this year for his Shatila project. This involved setting up a children's theatre group in Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, with ten children coming to the north east to tour the play. We have just reprinted Mortimer's Camp Shatila: a writer's chronicle, giving us the chance to do that final edit we had to miss (when producing the first edition in three weeks) and to add a postscript covering the theatre tour.
Peter has now organised a second tour, with a new cast, coming to The Sage in Gateshead and Saville Exchange in North Shields in February. The play will also be shown for a week at a theatre in Christian East Beirut before coming here.
Peter needs to raise money to bring the children over. On July 18th a bunch of writers, actors and others will be doing a sponsored Shatila ramble through North Tyneside and in June Tyneside Cinema will be showing a film of the first tour "The Palestinians are Coming". Peter Mortimer can be contacted on 0191 253 1901 by anyone wishing to become more involved, including setting up a Shatila Trust to create closer links between the north east and Shatila. Meantime one of the camp football teams is playing in Whitley Bay FC shirts - Pete's local team, currently Wembley bound for the final of the FA Vase.
Other shortlisted projects for the Arab British award include the BBC 2 series The Frankincense Trail.

States of Independence

A regional event
INDEPENDENT PRESS DAY
Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Oxford Road, Leicester
10.30am – 4.30pm, Saturday 20th March.
Independent presses from across the region (and some from around the country) will be on site, together with many regional writers whose work is published by large and small independent publishers. Join us for an hour or two or the whole day.
Open to all and free of charge.

Forty writers, mostly from the East Midlands, will be reading from their work at an events programme to accompany an equal number of independent publishers and writers' organisations staffing bookstalls and displaying their work.
Authors include nationally known figures including children's writers Berlie Doherty (twice winner of the Carnegie Award) and Chris D'Lacey, novelists Anthony Cartwright (Heartland, recently read on Book at Bedtime) and Rod Madocks (shortlisted for the ITV Crime and Thriller Awards) and poets Gregory Woods and Deborah Tyler-Bennett. We'll also be providing a Leicester launch for Maria Allen's first novel, launching the international poetry magazine Cleave and featuring talks on independent football magazines, the 1984 Miners' Strike and well known phrases and sayings.
Independent press editors taking part include Iron Press's Peter Mortimer on his “40 years before the mast” as a publisher, and Lynne Patrick from Crème de la Crime, probably the only female crime fiction publisher in the UK. Publishers, groups and magazines from the East and West Midlands and the North East in particular will be represented.
Organised by Five Leaves Publications in Nottingham and the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort Univeristy.
Printed programmes available from info@fiveleaves.co.uk, 0115 9895465. Web programmes: http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/

There's a world out there...

... and some parts of it are interested in what we do. So here's Dan Tunstall (Big and Clever) in Left Lion, a magazine in Nottingham for hip young people...
http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/2805

...and the hip late-middle-aged Mike Gerber (Jazz Jews) in Jewish News
http://www.totallyjewish.com:80/entertainment/features_and_reviews/

...and the hippest owner of a bus pass in the North East, Peter Mortimer (Camp Shatila) in Tynedale Life
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/Launch.aspx?referral=other&pnum=&refresh=2j1JX09s0rG3&EID=830eed07-bd48-48b0-b54f-a06ab4cf5deb&skip=

... just don't mention the word hip in front of the Dundee crime writer Russel McLean (The Lost Sister), reviewed on CrimeSquad, or he'll make you need a replacement
http://www.crimesquad.com/reviews.asp?year=2010&month=1

There's never anything good on tellie these days

So why not watch Iranian TV? Or, to be more precise, Peter Mortimer talking about Camp Shatila on the Iranian station Press TV? In case your Farsi is a bit rusty, don't worry, he is being interviewed in English by George Galloway and you can find the programme on-line at http://www.presstv.ir/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510520&id=109660#109660.

Peter is also getting lots of press in the north east - in the Journal and the Northern Echo in the wake of him bringing a group of Palestinian children over from Shatila refugee camp outside Beirut to tour an English language play round the north east. This was a follow up from his writer's residency described in the book. About 1,200 people attended the eight performances, culminating in a big bash at The Sage. Peter has just won the arts section of the North East Celebrating Diversity Awards. The award was presented on October, the organiser being Equality North East. This award was given for Peter Mortimer’s Shatila project, and comes soon after Peter Mortimer was shortlisted for the 2009 Arab-British Culture Award for his play RIOT, published in English and Arabic by Five Leaves.

In the TV interview - about 14.5 minutes in if you want to cut to the chase - there are also very short clips of an interview with some of the children and of them performing.