Magnolia Street

We usually sell a handful of copies of Magnolia Street by Louis Golding each month to bookshop, and a handful every second month to Manchester Jewish Museum. We're happy, and Louis is not complaining (though he's been pretty poor at returning calls the last few decades anyway) as we sold the book pretty well when we republished it a few years ago. In the last few days though we've had orders for 75 copies, mostly via the internet. The power of Radio 4 then, as he was featured with two other important Manc writers from the past, Walter Greenwood and Howard Spring. Here's more on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tbck6. Anyone got a copy of the recording? The orders have cleaned us out, so a quick digital reprint is on its way.

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.

The Smug Bridgroom

Back in the mists of time, 2002 to be precise, Five Leaves published a book with this title by the poet Robert Hamberger, then living in the East Midlands. He moved, with his partner Keith to Brighton and we now only seem to keep in touch by email. Well, poetry books eight years old tend to - sadly - drift from memory so it was a great boost to read the long review below. At the time I particularly liked the second half of the book, a set of 21 sonnets called "The Rule of Earth" which were some of the best love poems I knew. Around the time I was reading a lot of poetry to and with older people and often used some of them, particularly "The Thought", extracted in the blog

http://popsublime.blogspot.com/2010/08/robert-hamberger-smug-bridegroom-five.html.

By chance I've also just caught up with Brokeback Mountain, also mentioned in the review. Thanks then to Jason Roush at popsublime, not least for reminding me of such a good book on the Five Leaves' backlist.

Happy campers

Dennis Hardy, one of the authors of our new edition of Goodnight Campers! was interviewed for Happy Campers - the story of Britain's holiday camps, coming out on BBC Radio 2 at 10.00pm on Tuesday 31 August. If he makes the cut he'll be joining Johnny Ball, Russell Grant, Alvin Stardust and Status Quo. Our book goes back to the socialist and trade union pioneer camps, some of which directly segued into the world of Billy Butlin, Pontins and Warners. Goodnight Campers! is not officially out until later in the year, but we have copies already and they can be ordered via http://www.fiveleaves.co.uk/. Hi-de-hi's all round.

Looking ahead to Cable Street

October 4 2011 will see the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street. Three Five Leaves writers took part in the battle, Bill Fishman, Bernard Kops and the late Harold Rosen. I spoke to Bernard a few days ago and he is - as always - looking forward to the next stage of his writing career with three sessions at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Bill's health has not been great but he is hoping to return to giving talks at U3A on East End history. A couple of weeks ago he was telling me about meeting Gandhi when he was stationed in India. Bill was a supporter of the Indian independence movement. He sometimes surprises local Indians by starting chatting to them in Hindi.

Five Leaves is looking ahead to the five books we are publishing for the anniversary. We are republishing Alan Gibbons' children's book Street of Tall People; the forgotten novel October Day by Frank Griffin; the Cable Street Group's booklet on the Battle; an as yet un-named book on Jewish responses to fascism by David Rosenberg; and Everything Happens on Cable Street, about everything else that happened there. The latter will include everything from the Maltese gangs, the modern day S & M club through to the famous film, To Sir, With Love. Roger Mills, a local resident will be putting that together. Meantime, here's The Men They Could Not Hang with The Ghosts of Cable Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKv5gjOzTA

All gone to look for America

Five Leaves' Russel McLean is up for one of the Shamus awards for his first novel, The Good Son. The Shamus awards are organised and presented by the Private Eye Writers of America, Russel's book is published by Minotaur/St. Martin's over there, the same publisher as his second book, The Lost Sister, which is also Five Leaves on this side. He is shortlisted for the best new private eye story. First Dundee, then the world. Jute, jam, journalism and crime fiction...
http://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com/2010/08/pwa-cwa-award-nominations-2010.html

Swanwick

It's nice to be in the younger section for a change, so a brief visit to Swanwick Writers' Summer School (www.swanwickwritersschool.co.uk) fitted that bill. Swanwick has been going since 1949 and some of the attendees have certainly clocked up quite a few of those years. There were younger people there, but not that many, and there were some quiet discussions going on about how to change the demographic. Hard to do, given Swanwick's long history and some of the features. This afternoon, for example, there was a visit to a National Trust property. As opposed to a rave? Good point, but you know what I mean. I was on a panel with an agent, a writer and a cohort from Writers' News. The hot discussion was on e-books, though one person remarked that in 18 months we won't be talking about them anymore because everything - the product, the reader, royalties - will all be sorted. I wish.
Two examples of success though. The current chair is Xanthe Wells, a friend from her Southwell days, who was originally recruited to Swanwick on a bursary for younger writers. And Daniela Norris, cutting an exotic figure being an Israeli who lives in Geneva, remarked that she owed her career to Swanwick. Daniela is the author, with Shireen Anabtawi, of Crossing Qalandiya (Reportage Press), a series of letters between these two women, one Israeli, one Palestinian. On the way back, by the way, people in Derby kept looking at my small bookstall trolley. It is a nice green trolley, but why were they looking at it? It took me a few minutes to realise that there was a big box (recycled from the stock room) with JEWS AND SEX (the title of one of our books) written on it in ENORMOUS letters facing everyone I passed.