Thursday, 21 March 2013
New from Five Leaves, London Fictions
Sunday, 17 March 2013
States round up
As with Lowdham's winter weekend a few postings ago, it is difficult to give an objective review of your own event, but I'll try. The fourth States of Independence took place over the weekend - as mentioned in the last posting. Over 300 attended (we have ways of counting people), with most people staying for most of the day. This was a bit down on past years - though more people stayed for longer. These two points were partly related as in previous years I'd spent a lot of time contacting special interest groups whose members might not have been interested in the whole day, but might have been interested in one particular event so that diverse grouping was not so numerous, and, for no apparent reason, there were fewer students around this year. Return to that aspect next time, I think.
The organising team had a disproportionate number of non-literary issues to deal with in the run up. At one stage I was all for skipping a year but my more realistic colleagues (at the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort) felt we would lose momentum so even if we went for a much smaller event we should keep going. But we still had 24 events, as originally planned, and one more bookstall than previous years. And people did stay longer. Last year one of our last slots had nobody but the speakers but (unless I have yet to hear) nothing was embarrassing this year. The traditional organisers' view of events starts with complete failure, moves up to embarrassing and anything above embarrassing is a great success... And some of our events throughout the day were packed to the gunnels, or if not packed, the right amount of people for a specialist event and some good discussion. At the LGBT writers meeting people said the discussion was particularly intense. Good. And many were a great success.
Stall takings are always interesting, though perhaps mostly to other stall holders. We had difficulties with the stall layout meaning a couple of awkward pinch points stopped people getting round as much as I'd have liked, but the stall with the worst position (Shearsman), who is given a free extra table to make up, had their best year so far. Their display is always attractive and I think the firm knows that the specialist poetry buyers will find them and flash the cash.
This was the first year I've ever gone to one of the events as I'm usually on the info point/Five Leaves stall, but this year was in conversation with Alison Moore, our local Booker shortlisted writer, published by the indie press Salt. That event was packed and Alison is a delight to interview. Five Leaves' Pippa Hennessy ran two sessions on ebooks, one on theory, one on practice. Pippa is now running a lot of these sessions. If I could have left the stall I'd have attended the rather riotous session on literary sex before and after 1963, the novelist Kerry Young's talk, that by an old friend and colleague Sarah Butler on "Ten things I've learnt about literature" (the title echoing the title of her first novel) and Maureen Makki on Sudanese women. Don't be surprised if all of these events are replicated in Lowdham during the summer. Of Five Leaves writers, Rod Madocks talked about his new set of short stories on mental health and Ian Parks (who is editing a book for us on Yorkshire poetry) gave a well-attended talk on Chartist poetry.
States also saw the announcement of the shortlist for the East Midlands Book Award. Two States organisers, Kathy Bell and I, are Trustees of EMBA, but the astonishing part of the announcement was that two of the other States organisers, Will Buckingham and Jonathan Taylor, were among the shortlisted writers and Alison Moore was one of our guest speakers on the day. Will and Jonathan even share an office at De Montfort. I'll post later on EMBA, but this year Leicester was particularly well represented on the shortlist of seven. When States was chosen for the announcement none of us knew who was on the shortlist or where they came from.
I should also mention that the day was supported financially by Creative Leicestershire. This enabled us to pay some people's travel from further away and reduce Five Leaves's financial subsidy to the event.
I also want to thank Cathy Galvin who stepped in at no notice to run the short story session with Charles Boyle after Ra Page from Comma Press had to drop out following a bereavement. We have not seen the last of Cathy around the East Midlands I think.
And special thanks to Simon Perril from DMU who, this year, was in charge of logistics, tech and DMU matters, and those students who helped with tables and with chairing.
Finally... it was a book festival... My purchases from other stalls were A Vanished Hand: my autograph album Anthony Rudoph (Shearsman), Ten Things I've Learnt about Love by Sarah Butler (Picador) and Getting the Coal: impressions of a twentieth century mining community edited by Jeane Carswell and Tracey Roberts (Mantle Oral History Project)
The organising team had a disproportionate number of non-literary issues to deal with in the run up. At one stage I was all for skipping a year but my more realistic colleagues (at the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort) felt we would lose momentum so even if we went for a much smaller event we should keep going. But we still had 24 events, as originally planned, and one more bookstall than previous years. And people did stay longer. Last year one of our last slots had nobody but the speakers but (unless I have yet to hear) nothing was embarrassing this year. The traditional organisers' view of events starts with complete failure, moves up to embarrassing and anything above embarrassing is a great success... And some of our events throughout the day were packed to the gunnels, or if not packed, the right amount of people for a specialist event and some good discussion. At the LGBT writers meeting people said the discussion was particularly intense. Good. And many were a great success.
Stall takings are always interesting, though perhaps mostly to other stall holders. We had difficulties with the stall layout meaning a couple of awkward pinch points stopped people getting round as much as I'd have liked, but the stall with the worst position (Shearsman), who is given a free extra table to make up, had their best year so far. Their display is always attractive and I think the firm knows that the specialist poetry buyers will find them and flash the cash.
This was the first year I've ever gone to one of the events as I'm usually on the info point/Five Leaves stall, but this year was in conversation with Alison Moore, our local Booker shortlisted writer, published by the indie press Salt. That event was packed and Alison is a delight to interview. Five Leaves' Pippa Hennessy ran two sessions on ebooks, one on theory, one on practice. Pippa is now running a lot of these sessions. If I could have left the stall I'd have attended the rather riotous session on literary sex before and after 1963, the novelist Kerry Young's talk, that by an old friend and colleague Sarah Butler on "Ten things I've learnt about literature" (the title echoing the title of her first novel) and Maureen Makki on Sudanese women. Don't be surprised if all of these events are replicated in Lowdham during the summer. Of Five Leaves writers, Rod Madocks talked about his new set of short stories on mental health and Ian Parks (who is editing a book for us on Yorkshire poetry) gave a well-attended talk on Chartist poetry.
States also saw the announcement of the shortlist for the East Midlands Book Award. Two States organisers, Kathy Bell and I, are Trustees of EMBA, but the astonishing part of the announcement was that two of the other States organisers, Will Buckingham and Jonathan Taylor, were among the shortlisted writers and Alison Moore was one of our guest speakers on the day. Will and Jonathan even share an office at De Montfort. I'll post later on EMBA, but this year Leicester was particularly well represented on the shortlist of seven. When States was chosen for the announcement none of us knew who was on the shortlist or where they came from.
I should also mention that the day was supported financially by Creative Leicestershire. This enabled us to pay some people's travel from further away and reduce Five Leaves's financial subsidy to the event.
I also want to thank Cathy Galvin who stepped in at no notice to run the short story session with Charles Boyle after Ra Page from Comma Press had to drop out following a bereavement. We have not seen the last of Cathy around the East Midlands I think.
And special thanks to Simon Perril from DMU who, this year, was in charge of logistics, tech and DMU matters, and those students who helped with tables and with chairing.
Finally... it was a book festival... My purchases from other stalls were A Vanished Hand: my autograph album Anthony Rudoph (Shearsman), Ten Things I've Learnt about Love by Sarah Butler (Picador) and Getting the Coal: impressions of a twentieth century mining community edited by Jeane Carswell and Tracey Roberts (Mantle Oral History Project)
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Man with white shirt talks to someone who is clearly very interested...
Indie book fair to host awards announcement
Authors shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award will be giving readings at a free independent literary festival which returns to Leicester this weekend.
It will be the first time the States of Independence book fair at De Montfort University (DMU) will host the announcement of the shortlist for the awards.
The festival programme on Saturday will also see star authors offering guidance to creative writers, talks on Chartist poetry, the lives of Sudanese women and unexplained phenomena, a discussion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writing, performances of short plays and even a recital of Bulgarian guitar music.
“States of Independence is a one day carnival of the feisty, the wayward, the unclassifiable, and the wilfully strange,” said Will Buckingham, DMU lecturer, philosopher, novelist and author of popular children’s picture-book, The Snorgh and the Sailor.
Admission will be free to the book fair, described as “a literary festival in a day,” which will be in the university's Clephan Building in Bonners Lane, off Oxford Street, from 10.30am to 4.30pm and will feature guest writers and publishers from the East Midlands and beyond.
Star guests will include Nottingham-based Alison Moore, whose first novel,The Lighthouse, was short-listed for last year's Booker Prize and Sarah Butler whose Ten Things I've Learnt About Love has created a stir in the publishing world.
The States of Independence festival will feature workshops, readings, panels, seminars, book launches, and regional writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, artist books, magazines and journals.
Seventy writers, mostly from the East Midlands, will be reading from their work, and visitors will be able to learn everything they need to know about eBooks and comics.
Sessions at the festival will cater for readers and writers with a huge range of interests. One panel will be offering advice on setting up and marketing a small press and there will be two sessions offering advice on e-publishing.
Meanwhile the foyer and corridors will host nearly 40 stalls showcasing the best in indie publishing from the region and beyond.
The event is co-hosted by Five Leaves Publications from Nottingham and De Montfort University's Creative Writing team, with sponsorship from Creative Leicestershire.
“States of Independence is a splash of colour against the gray background of corporate publishing,” said Dr Simon Perril, DMU Subject Leader for Creative Writing and poet, author of Newton’s Splinter, Nitrate, and the forthcomingArchilochus on the Moon.
“It sets out to celebrate the abundance of independent creative energies within the region by putting on a day of events of impressive variety. Where else will you find debates about the e-book, talks on comics, discussions of unexplained phenomena, and readings of short stories about mental health in the same day!
“The East Midlands Book Award is open to any published books of fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction written in the preceding year by authors living in the East Midlands. So come to States and you not only get to hear who is nominated, you also get to buy their books before anyone else!
“Come along and find a range of fascinating titles you simply won’t find in high street chains bloated with celebrity autobiographies.”
Visitors will be welcome to pop in or to stay all day. The full programme is at www.statesofindependence.co.uk
Monday, 11 March 2013
Five Leaves writer wins $150,000
The South African-born, Glasgow based, novelist and short-story writer Zoë Wicomb is one of two UK writers winning the Windham-Campbell award of $150,000 each (the other being the American-born playwright Naomi Wallace). Her latest book of short stories, The One that Got Away, was published by the Nottingham small independent Five Leaves and is the only one of her books available from a British publisher.
The One that Got Away is a collection linking her adopted residence of Glasgow with her country of birth.
Zoë Wicomb is
currently a Professor in the Department of English Studies at
Strathclyde University and Visiting Professor at Stellenbosch
University, South Africa. In addition to two collections of short
stories, she has published two novels, David’s Story and
Playing in the Light. She has also been one of the judges on
the IMPAC literary award.
The appearance of Zoë Wicomb’s first set of short stories, You Can’t Get Lost in Capetown, precipitated the founding of a fan club that has come to include Toni Morrison, J.M. Coetzee, Bharati Mukherjee, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, TLS and the New Yorker, though she remains fairly unknown in this country.
The One That Got Away straddles dual worlds. An array of characters inhabits a complexly interconnected, twenty-first century universe. The author explores a range of human relationships: marriage, friendship, family ties, and relations with those who serve us. Wicomb’s fluid, shifting technique makes for exhilarating reading, full of ironic twists, ambiguities, and moments of insight.
The Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell literature prizes at Yale University recognize emerging and established writers for outstanding achievement in fiction, non-fiction, and drama. This is its inaugural year and nine writers were awarded $150,000 each.
Ross Bradshaw, from Five Leaves Publications, said, “I have been a big fan of Zoë Wicomb's work since her first collection of short stories was published by Virago in 1987. I was astonished to discover that she did not have a UK publisher subsequently, so I approached her for UK rights to her most recent short story collection, which has also been published in South Africa and the USA.”
Zoë Wicomb said, “This is a validation I would never have dreamt of. I am overwhelmed — and deeply grateful for this generous prize. It will keep me for several years, and it will speed up the writing too since I can now afford to go away when the first draft proves difficult to produce in my own house”.
Copies of The One that Got Away are available from Five Leaves. Zoë Wicomb is available for interview via Five Leaves. Please contact Ross Bradshaw via fiveleaves.co.uk@googlemail.com.
Copies of The One That Got Away are available for purchase from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/the-one-that-got-away/
Sunday, 10 March 2013
Society of Authors' grants for writers
The closing date for this year's round of writers grants is at the end of April. The grant schemes are for writers in need, writers needing to buy time, and for specific dedicated projects:
http://www.societyofauthors.org/sites/default/files/Guidelines-Authors'%20Foundation.pdf
http://www.societyofauthors.org/sites/default/files/Guidelines-Authors'%20Foundation.pdf
Thursday, 7 March 2013
Reading is dead good
A few years ago, during a Philip Roth reading phase, his book Everyman appeared. Somehow I picked up that it would be one of his best, but avoided reviews, planning to reward myself with it after a particularly difficult period - the imminent death of my father. It was, as the Irish say, a good death though my ambition to make him read a novel before dying failed. He was widely read in poetry and non-fiction, especially history and biography, but saw novels as a waste of time. How did he know if, as claimed, he'd never read one? Standing over him with an Ian McEwan shouting "Repent!" did not work and he left the world unshriven, in a literary sense. On the train home from his death I pulled out Everyman to cheer myself up. Roth fans (or friends, who know all my stories as well as I do by now) will know that there could have been better choices as the novel focusses on a man in his fifties who has a heart attack on the way back from visiting his dying father.
I tried to read on, but started to have breathing difficulties and chest pains... Unfortunately the only other book in my bag was a new book on London cemeteries by Catharine Arnold, so the long train journey passed without reading.
I was keen to get home as we had a Five Leaves launch event that night, expected to be well attended. The publication was by Cathy Grindrod, a poetry collection called Still Breathing, a rather excellent set of poems being responses to... the death of her father. Cathy is a wonderful reader, but I can assure you I did not listen to a word.
The next day, calling in at my County Hall office (I was balancing being Nottinghamshire County Council's Literature Officer with running Five Leaves), a review copy of Matt Haig's latest novel arrived in the post. One of the secretaries, Lu Blackband, was a big fan of Haig and I asked her if she wanted to borrow it and I'd read it after her. She blanched when she saw the title, which I had somehow overlooked in passing it straight to her - The Dead Father's Club.
Friends will know why this cameo came back to mind.
I tried to read on, but started to have breathing difficulties and chest pains... Unfortunately the only other book in my bag was a new book on London cemeteries by Catharine Arnold, so the long train journey passed without reading.
I was keen to get home as we had a Five Leaves launch event that night, expected to be well attended. The publication was by Cathy Grindrod, a poetry collection called Still Breathing, a rather excellent set of poems being responses to... the death of her father. Cathy is a wonderful reader, but I can assure you I did not listen to a word.
The next day, calling in at my County Hall office (I was balancing being Nottinghamshire County Council's Literature Officer with running Five Leaves), a review copy of Matt Haig's latest novel arrived in the post. One of the secretaries, Lu Blackband, was a big fan of Haig and I asked her if she wanted to borrow it and I'd read it after her. She blanched when she saw the title, which I had somehow overlooked in passing it straight to her - The Dead Father's Club.
Friends will know why this cameo came back to mind.
Lowdham winter weekend round up
It is difficult to review your own event without sounding vainglorious or, conversely, annoying the hell out of your fellow organisers, writers and volunteers by seeming to diss the work they have done, but I have to say Lowdham Book Festival's winter weekend was a great success, with all the sessions being nicely or well attended and all the speakers giving their best.
It's not all about numbers, but we had somewhere between 700 and 750 attendances over the weekend, with three of the events topping 100. We made a modest profit, which will go towards the bigger summer festival. Unlike summer, where we produce 10,000-15,000 brochures and do a lot of press work, publicity for the winter weekend comprises a couple of thousands leaflets, and email to our mailing list and an article, admittedly front page, in the local free paper, The Bramley. The winter weekend is aimed at our core audience and most of those attending were known suspects. The programme was aimed at them, with Catherine Bailey pulling in the country house fans, Polly Toynbee attracting the book festival left in what became something of a socialist rally, County Archivist Chris Weir attracting his local history fan base, Chris Arnot bringing in the chaps for a talk on beer and football, Roy Bainton playing to the fringe with his talk on weird things and Sheelagh Gallagher, a regular fixture at our events, bringing her followers along for a talk on secrets and lies (the theme of the weekend) in the work of Ian McEwan and Sarah Waters. Indeed, the only debut speakers at the weekend were the crime writer Sophie Hannah and our local Booker-shortlisted novelist Alison Moore. We could have done with a bigger audience for Sophie, but mostly because she was so good and our core audience would have loved her - the numbers were still very respectable for her talk, just there are times when you think that so-and-so and so-and-so would have loved that.
The section I enjoyed most though was interviewing Alison Moore. I had some slight worries as she has only written one novel and a group of scattered short stories, which have not yet been collected, so I was probably the only person who'd read more than the novel, but she was just so easy to interview and the audience loved her. I'll post a later blog on Alison soon, but we are doing another run at it on the 16th at States of Independence in Leicester if you missed her at Lowdham.
The best winter weekends always have a theme, though "Secrets and Lies" is so usefully broad it could just about describe any of our festival content, certainly on the fiction front.
Jane Streeter (fellow organiser) and I had a great time, so thanks to our audience, our speakers, our front of house (especially Liz and Richard Kaczor who attended everything), Mm Deli who ran the cafe and the various stall holders and publishers who we worked with.
The summer Lowdham Book Festival runs from 21-29th June. If you would like to be on our mailing list email janestreeter@thebookcase.co.uk with mailing list in the heading.
Given it was a book festival, I should that I left with a pamphlet on the Nottingham artist Marjorie Bates (a cousin of Laura Knight), who I'd not heard of previously, Ian McEwan's children's book Rose Blanch, Karen Maitland's latest medieval murder, The Falcons of Fire and Ice - we'll be asking Karen to come to Lowdham this summer - and a proof copy of Sophie Hannah's next novel.
It's not all about numbers, but we had somewhere between 700 and 750 attendances over the weekend, with three of the events topping 100. We made a modest profit, which will go towards the bigger summer festival. Unlike summer, where we produce 10,000-15,000 brochures and do a lot of press work, publicity for the winter weekend comprises a couple of thousands leaflets, and email to our mailing list and an article, admittedly front page, in the local free paper, The Bramley. The winter weekend is aimed at our core audience and most of those attending were known suspects. The programme was aimed at them, with Catherine Bailey pulling in the country house fans, Polly Toynbee attracting the book festival left in what became something of a socialist rally, County Archivist Chris Weir attracting his local history fan base, Chris Arnot bringing in the chaps for a talk on beer and football, Roy Bainton playing to the fringe with his talk on weird things and Sheelagh Gallagher, a regular fixture at our events, bringing her followers along for a talk on secrets and lies (the theme of the weekend) in the work of Ian McEwan and Sarah Waters. Indeed, the only debut speakers at the weekend were the crime writer Sophie Hannah and our local Booker-shortlisted novelist Alison Moore. We could have done with a bigger audience for Sophie, but mostly because she was so good and our core audience would have loved her - the numbers were still very respectable for her talk, just there are times when you think that so-and-so and so-and-so would have loved that.
The section I enjoyed most though was interviewing Alison Moore. I had some slight worries as she has only written one novel and a group of scattered short stories, which have not yet been collected, so I was probably the only person who'd read more than the novel, but she was just so easy to interview and the audience loved her. I'll post a later blog on Alison soon, but we are doing another run at it on the 16th at States of Independence in Leicester if you missed her at Lowdham.
The best winter weekends always have a theme, though "Secrets and Lies" is so usefully broad it could just about describe any of our festival content, certainly on the fiction front.
Jane Streeter (fellow organiser) and I had a great time, so thanks to our audience, our speakers, our front of house (especially Liz and Richard Kaczor who attended everything), Mm Deli who ran the cafe and the various stall holders and publishers who we worked with.
The summer Lowdham Book Festival runs from 21-29th June. If you would like to be on our mailing list email janestreeter@thebookcase.co.uk with mailing list in the heading.
Given it was a book festival, I should that I left with a pamphlet on the Nottingham artist Marjorie Bates (a cousin of Laura Knight), who I'd not heard of previously, Ian McEwan's children's book Rose Blanch, Karen Maitland's latest medieval murder, The Falcons of Fire and Ice - we'll be asking Karen to come to Lowdham this summer - and a proof copy of Sophie Hannah's next novel.
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