More small talk

On 18 April I put up a link to Two Ravens' take on the current small indie press scene. This is about CB Editions, run by a refugee from Faber. Interesting stuff on covers and on small press economics
http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/2010/02/human-comedy-of-publishing-world.html

Free time

Pippa Hennessy, part-time worker at Five Leaves, should really be using her time off to think about her next Five Leaves' project, faithfully memorising the content of books from our back catalogue and voluntarily polishing the Chairman of the Board's Roller. She does, however, have a literary life of her own. In that guise she has two interesting events coming up, both connected with the Nottingham University School of Education's Creative and Professional Writing Degree. The first of these is on 24th May where The National Academy of Writing hits town. Among the activities that day are a talk by the travel writer Ian Marchant (very popular at Lowdham Book Festival two or three years back) and two students having their work publicly analysed by the novelist Richard Beard, in front of the audience. Let's hope it's Pippa who gets chosen. The afternoon's events are free, see http://naw-nottingham.eventbrite.com. The other event, which clashes with a Five Leaves' reading by Danuta Reah and Stephen Booth in Sheffield (note to self, give staff a lecture on diary management) is the launch of the Creative Writing course/Fine Art student anthology, Out of the Fire - free, refreshments provided, 6.30pm at the Colin Campbell Building at Nottingham University on Wednesday 8th June. Pippa edited the first such anthology last year, while this year's editor is Grant Kent. All welcome.

In Pippa's campaign to become the best connected local writer she has also become secretary of Nottingham Poetry Society.

CUNY and Kushner

Many years ago, in our book of Jewish women's poetry, The Dybbuk of Delight, we published a short poem by Miriam Halamy called Washing Apples, in the wake of "Mandela casting his vote" she hopes her son knows "...now why I said/at street stalls, at supermarkets, not those, or those/why it was never just an apple". The boycott of Cape fruit was an easy one. though. A couple of years beforehand I had been called in by an important political figure on my patch. He'd just bought a book from the shop I worked in, and found, on the copyright page, that the publisher (Penguin? Hutchinson? OUP?, could have been any of them) had an office in South Africa. As our shop was a political bookshop, he said he expected us now to take off all the books from publishers having offices in South Africa. Never mind that it would have left the shop without any books by big publishers and we'd have to close, he was unaware that the ANC had exempted books from the boycott. He deflated a bit more when I pointed out that he should not eat the KitKat sticking out of his breast pocket, or drink the Nescafe on his shelf because of other boycotts in operation - but that was just point scoring.
These days the debate is all about Israel. True, we have a company policy of not buying Caterpillar Trucks because of their involvement in the West Bank, but in 16 years not one Israeli bookshop has ordered a book from us (though I don't think that is boycotting us, they are just not interested). Would we supply them? Of course we would. We do publish Israeli authors from time to time, and will continue to do so. Boycotts should not be about boycotting individuals surely, but representatives of an offending organisation or state. This is a big and complicated issue, as Ian McEwan found out when he was offered the Jerusalem Prize. He came out of it very well, and was able to join some Israeli writers in protesting against house seizures at Sheikh Jarrah (something I have done too). But one boycott not hitting the news is CUNY (City University of New York) withdrawing an offer of an honorary degree to the playwright, screenwriter and lyricist Tony Kushner because of his involvement with Jewish peace groups. This mirrors an earlier episode at Brandeis University. And it stinks.
In his song about exile, An Undoing World, written for the Klezmatics (I don't think they'll be playing CUNY for a while) he used the lines "You live adrift, and everything you feared/Comes to you in this undoing world". Well, not getting an honorary doctorate is easily survivable, but there is just that hint of McCarthyism in the air.
UPDATE: CUNY has now changed its position, in the light of protests and some other authors returning their honorary degrees. But Matthew Goldstein, Chancellor of CUNY, in announcing the change of mind, pointed out that they were now offering to honour Kushner "whether or not we agree with him, whether or not we take exception to some of his views". Well, that's all right then. Matty sounds like a nice guy.

Libri quinque folii

This is it then, the final corrections have been put in, an agreement has been reached over which Roman Gods are merely minor deities (these things matter) and the barcode box has travelled up and down the Roman road pictured on the back cover until it is dizzy.

Roman Nottinghamshire started life as a talk at Lowdham Book Festival many years ago. The talk was packed out, and the author, who normally wrote about Romans in a national context agreed to write a book on Nottinghamshire. Her book never appeared, and was abandoned. Some years later, discovering that a journalist friend knew a lot about the subject he, Mark Patterson, agreed to write a 64 page book with ten or so illustrations, largely to sell at Tourist Offices and the like. As we approached his deadline Mark asked if it could be a bit longer - sure, liberty hall here. So, on the deadline appeared enough text to make a 300+ page book including over 100 illustrations. It was a much better idea, but left little time to have it professionally proof-read by a Roman specialist, edit and do a complicated production job, adding things like an index and extensive bibliography which would not have been needed in the smaller book. Here's our poster. But I've just realised that bookshops/Amazon/our own website have the old bibliographic information - so need to send out notice of changes of size, price, number of illustrations. And we changed the cover too.
Copies are available via http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/roman_nottinghamshire_mark_patterson_i022326.aspx

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.

World Book Night follow up

And so to Countesthorpe where Active Arts (www.activearts.org.uk) hosted a discussion about World Book Night, and various other bookish matters. I was pleased that the panel included Debbie James from the Kibworth Beauchamp bookshop as she has just agreed to be one of the judges for the next round of the East Midlands Book Award. After eighteen months of bookselling she and her shop are thriving. Though this was hardly its best attended meeting, Active Arts reflect the name and has booked our Dan Tunstall for a day's work in the local Countesthorpe College. He was a student at the College, though Active Arts did not know that at the time of the booking. The group appreciated this article http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/id/3497 by James Walker, about his experience of giving out books at World Book Night, some of which I read out. And I appreciated their cakes and company. Not only that, our bookstall takings at that small gathering were larger than the whole of our last month's sales to the Waterstone's chain! WBN, by the way, is booked for April 23 next year. Not sure of the format yet.

Five Leaves' writer awarded awarded Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship

No, the prize is not to be kidnapped or to be marooned on a desert island, , but six weeks accommodation in a self-catering studio at the Hotel Chevillion International Arts Centre in Grez-sur-Loing (the town where Robert met his missus, Fanny Osborne). There is also a small stipend. Our author is J. David Simons, who will be joined by poet Niall Campbell, novelist Gwendoline Riley and film maker Joern Utkilen. David will use his time to work on ideas for a third novel set in Scotland and British-mandate Palestine, which will complete the trilogy including The Credit Draper and The Liberation of Celia Kahn, both Five Leaves. The Fellowship allows the writers time away from their normal environment and the opportunity to discuss their work with other Fellows. We hope that the third part of the trilogy will be published by Five Leaves in 2014.