Of Dublin - and Other Fictions, by Nuala Ni Chonchuir

It is entirely possible that this tiny yet enormous little book is the same physical size as the photograph here - I haven't measured either, but they look pretty close.  One thing is for certain, 'Of Dublin' might be physically tiny but it is a big-hearted little tome which surpasses much heftier books with its sheer strength. I was delighted to be sent a copy.
     Nuala Ni Chonchuir is one of those writers who refuses to be pigeonholed - short stories, flash fictions, poetry, a novel and a second due out early next year. Each of the eleven stories in this 28 page gem sings a different song, and yet, like the best of choral acts, they are in harmony. This is an enormously gifted writer.

Photo credit: Emilia Krysztofiak

Her gifts are apparent immediately in the opening story, 'Jesus of Dublin', its strength of voice, its characterisation, its seeming irreverence - 

I'm the O'Connell Street Jesus, I have a granite plinth and a glass case so swanky it could have come from the National Museum. My old box had a pitched roof  - draughty - and I nearly passed out incide the PVC yoke some nut-job from Irishtown threw together.

the whole a short romp between Jesus and 'the mother,'

down the Bull Island doing the Stella Maris thing, watching over sailors

until you reach the end and her lyricism takes over, becomes prayer-like but totally organic with the piece, leaving me for some unfathomable reason with a lump firmly embedded in the throat,

I'm the Jesus of taxi man and Traveller; of Garda and gambler; Jesus of the pissed and the pioneer. I'm Jesus of culchie and jackeen; brasser and nun. Jesus of Nigerian and Pole; of wino and wierdo. Jesus of soft rain, December snow and rare sun...

and I think that's why I enjoy this writer's work so much. She is never ever predictable.  Her voices are many, and fluid, and great. In the following story, '12th July 1691', the voice shifts to encompass the rhythms of a lost time, and in 'Treedaughter' becomes something like the teller of a fable. The boisterousness complete with a liberal sprinkling of glorious profanities comes back in 'Penny and Leo and Married Bliss' - but there is more than an echo of poignancy as well; 'What Became Of The People We Used To Be?' and 'Fish' seem to me to share that poignancy, an ache.
        Fish is probably my favourite story in this chapbook, and for some unaccountable reason I can't get the trailer to embed here (technofail) but please do visit Dan Powell's blog to read his review and watch the trailer, to hear 'Fish' being read to you here: http://danpowellfiction.com/2013/11/12/review-of-dublin-and-other-fictions/
        Or is my favourite 'The Road that Mills and Boon Built'? It's very very clever - its well known that pulped paperbacks were used in roadbuilding in the UK - and this story is just magic.

Thoroughly recommended! An object lesson in how a tiny book can pack a real punch. Kudos.

Of Dublin is published by Tower Press, San Francisco. 

FIVE books: Short Circuit 11, the Overheard, Irreal Reader and Red Room anthologies, and my poetry book!

Just in case you thought I was sitting back, letting the untold fame and fortune that comes from writing  keep me in clover and laziness, I would have you know the opposite is true. Yes! I'm poor, but busy.  So here's a catch up, on five books I've been working on, or with, or for...

There's a new Short Circuit, a second edition, with eight new chapters! Endorsed by the Bridport Prize, Fish Prize, Asham Award, the Frank O'Connor Award, by lecturers in Creative Writing, and by writers themselves, this overtakes  the first edition which is recommended reading on many courses across the UK and further afield.
New chapters come packed with wisdom on crafting the short story with insights into how, plus ideas for further exploration, and lists of inspirational stories, from the following:
Carys Davies
Nicholas Royle
Professor Patty McNair (Professor at Columbia College Chicago)
Scott Pack (Publisher, The Friday Project, Harper Collins)
Stuart Evers
Tom Vowler
Zoe King (Chair of Society of Women Writers and Journalists)

And it's great! And HUGE. Salt have surpassed themselves.

This gorgeous book is an anthology of stories edited by Jonathan Taylor, from Salt Publishing, and contains work intended to be either read on the page, or read aloud, as the title suggests. My story herein is 'Ed's Theory of the Soul' and is strange, strange, concerning as it does a bloke who is not sure whether humans are the only creatures with souls. What about the sea? What about the earth? A wall? At the recent NAWE Conference, a few of us had an opportunity to read from our contributions to the gathered masses -  a wonderful occasion. Thrilled to be in here!

Jonathan says: Because of the way these stories speak from the page, it doesn’t matter whether or not they are actually read out loud. Rather, these are stories which might equally be ‘performed’ on the reader’s mental stage, heard in the reader’s mind’s-ear. There is a burgeoning culture in the U.K. and beyond of oral story-telling and prose writers performing their work live, a culture which has developed out of the popularity of poetry in performance. There are numerous collections and anthologies which aim to capture the energy of performance poetry on the page. There is, though, no comparable literature for stories in performance – making this collection unique.
In order to demonstrate the huge diversity of possible performance styles in prose, the collection mingles flash fiction with more sustained stories, genre fiction with realism, experimental pieces with oral storytelling. Contributors are similarly varied in their styles, backgrounds, experience and genres, and include Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Louis De Bernières, Adele Parks, Kate Pullinger, Adam Roberts, Michelene Wandor, Vanessa Gebbie, Judith Allnatt, Jo Baker, David Belbin, Panos Karnezis, Jane Holland, Gemma Seltzer, Ailsa Cox and Will Buckingham.

The Irreal Reader (Guide Dog Books, US)

Now here's a thing, a rather different anthology in many ways, and here’s the background: 

The Cafe Irreal: International Imagination,  http://cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/index.htm a pioneering web-based literary magazine, first went online in 1998 with the intention of publishing a type of fantastic fiction most often associated with writers such as Franz Kafka, Kobo Abe and Jorge Luis Borges. To this end, it has published more than 250 authors from over 30 countries. In the course of the past fifteen years, it has also seen its editors nominated for a World Fantasy Award and been named by Writer’s Digest as one of the Top 30 Short Story Markets.

In this anthology, edited by G.S. Evans and Alice Whittenburg, Guide Dog Books presents a selection of the fiction and essays from The Cafe Irreal that take us most definitively into the realm of the Irreal. These include pieces by Diploma de Honor Konex winner Ana María Shua (Argentina), Michal Ajvaz (winner of the Magnesia Litera prize in the Czech Republic), Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Simic, and Pushcart Prize winners Bruce Holland Rogers and Caitlin Horrocks.

I have two stories in this anthology - the first became the title story from my own collection and is called ‘Storm Warning’, and the second is called ‘The Note-Takers’.  Do not ask where either came from, I don’t. I’m just grateful and honoured to have my work included. Big Smile.

 And then there's the wonderful Red Room anthology, edited by A J Ashworth, from Unthank. This contains stories donated by the contributors, to help raise funds for the Bronte Birthplace Trust. David Constantine, Alison Moore, Tania Hershman, Elizabeth Baines...and more and more. My story in here is a rewrite of the final chapter of Jane Eyre, and is entitled 'Chapter XXXV111 - Conclusion (and a little bit of added cookery...)' So you see, I am letting myself write fun, whizzy, wacky stories, whatever you want to call them. Whatever comes, and why not eh? Necessary Fiction reviewed the collection,  among others, and when it comes to my madness, says this:

Perhaps the most outrageous (and also outrageously funny) of these mischievous pieces is Vanessa Gebbie’s “Chapter XXXVIII – Conclusion (and a little bit of added cookery) with abject apologies to Charlotte Brontë.” Gebbie rewrites the ending to Jane Eyre and keeps her tongue firmly in her cheek while doing so. This is a wickedly clever Jane, emphasis on wicked, and one I suspect Jean Rhys would greatly admire as we watch her dispatch the servants and others to arrange her domestic life to suit her own happiness, a Jane that can listen, unperturbed, as Rochester utters an expression like “rumpy pumpy.”

 Perhaps you see what I mean. I'm having fun! Oh, and finally, but not finally, if you see what I mean, my poetry collection: 

Beautifully created by the wonderful Pighog Press. Launched next week at the Pigbaby Festival - with readings not only from moi but also from the fabulous Pascale Petit. 

That'll do for now!

The Last Kings of Sark - Rosa Rankin-Gee's prizewinning debut novel

I am a lucky person - a facebook message a while back asked would I like to read a prizewinning novella turned into a novel,  about to be published by Virago.  Well, yes please, obviously. I had heard of Rosa Rankin-Gee's wonderful win at the Shakespeare and Co Novella Prize in 2011, with a twinge of jealousy - here she is, only just out of the egg. (Well, to me, most people are just out of the egg.) The jealousy is based on the number of years she has left to write - mumble mumble grump. 

      Reader, The Last Kings of Sark is great. The first portion, which follows the fortunes of three young people on the island of Sark, captures perfectly, and in a fantastic setting, the intense friendships we make when we are almost adult, but not quite... when every day holds possibilities, and we take a deep breath and rush in, as into the sea. It is fascinating, too, to know that it began as this prizewinning novella, then Rankin-Gee took the brave step of extending it, into something greater. I love novellas, wouldn't have minded had it remained thus, but the second half is something of a mirror image -and as mirrors do, we meet ourselves, only not quite. And we meet the characters again...  It is thought provoking, and I found this part hugely poignant, opening up as it did, all sorts of memories about plans in my yoof that never quite...oh you know. I read the whole with with joy, and sent the publishers a few words about the book. Here's the link if you'd like to see what I said, among many others. http://rosarankingee.com/the-last-kings-of-sark/

The Last Kings of Sark is published this week. Just for the blog, the author has been nattering about this terrific debut novel, and about her writing life. 

     

VG: Welcome Rosa. Have a cuppa and a choccie biccie. Right - first , looking at “A novel in parts”-  Congratulations on winning the Shakespeare and Co Novella prize.  I am now trying to imagine the process of adding the second part some time later, if that’s how it went? What issues did you have to face extending it? Was it your idea, or your  agent’s/ publisher’s?

RR-G: It was a collaborative idea. At first I was fixed on the idea that it would stay a novella, but it’s almost impossible to publish a novella unless you’re Doris Lessing or Ian McEwan. I am very glad I set about turning it into a novel though – it’s the book it should be. I wasn’t finished with the characters yet and to a certain degree, the book grows up, as I did while I was writing it. Victoria Pepe, my wonderful editor who’s actually just left Virago, was very influential and helped me make the book a lot more compact and complete. There’s a sense of nostalgia in the first half of the book, which is only really earned by what happens in part two.

V: Talk to me about ‘Lord of the Flies.’ It’s mentioned a couple of times, maybe more, in the first part of the novel. There are some shallow parallels - both are set on islands, both have young people behaving differently when they are freed from constraints in one way or another.  What other echoes would you like to be picked up between Lord of the Flies and The Last Kings of Sark? 

R: It’s not the major framework for the novel, but you’re right – the characters themselves mention it, and there are little links, as well as fundamental differences, seeing as Sark is an idyll, more than anything.I think a lot of the first part of the novel is about young people intentionally evading and looking away from adulthood. The intention is perhaps the key – Jude, Sofi and Pip’s actions can never really mirror Lord of the Flies, precisely because they are aware of Lord of the Flies. As you’ve very kindly said, The Last Kings of Sark is about “the intense butterfly moments when we are on the cusp of adulthood, but not quite there.” Jude, Sofi and Pip are in between. They are aware of their options, their precedents, their future. Of the Lord of the Flies’ child-world where all may eventually be excused, and the adult one, where everything is harder, more fixed. I suppose it’s the last summer when they are able to inhabit the impermanent space between the two.

V: Sark itself. Did you set it on Sark and then go there to research, or did you go there at some point anyway and the story/characters appeared out of that experience? Also, was it important that this story should be set on an island, that the setting should echo the content, somehow?

R:  I came up with the bones of the plot and a lot of the detail when I was on Sark, with a lovely friend called Tor, working for a summer. She helped me a great deal. Each evening, I’d try and take down notes of everything I’d seen during the day, and her memory was often better than mine. But yes, choosing to situate the book on an island definitely informed the story of the first part. A novella is a condensed mode, and islands are natural microcosms – both are small and self-contained, and I liked that.

4. If you could have one scene from Last Kings of Sark painted, which scene would it be, and who would you want for the artist?

R: I love this question! I think I’d choose one of the Fauvists. Derain or Vlaminck. For their burning colour, and their joyfulness (I see it as joyfulness). If not, Signac – I  saw his retrospective at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier this summer, and he captures light hitting water sublimely. I’d want the painter to read the book and chose the scene themselves. The private beach by way of Cider Press cottage would be a good bet though. 

The Red Buoy, by Signac

V: My mother was a librarian, and a real literary snob. I know, had she been alive when I decided to write, I would have given up quite fast, thanks to apprehension about her comments. Now, however, I wish she’d been around to see what I’ve done... she’d probably have been very proud. I admire your own mother’s work hugely - as you are aware, both it and she have been a very positive influence for me as a writer. ( I admire your father’s work greatly too, not to leave him out!)  Is it easy, now, being the daughter of not one, but two writers? Are the obvious expectations  from others a weight, or a spur?

R: There was no pressure in any sense from them. (about becoming a writer. Naturally, all parents exert pressures in other ways: Do GCSE German! Brush your teeth! And other highly unreasonable things like that). I’m quite entrepreneurial, and I think they would have both equally encouraged me to do something with that, or become an archaeologist or a songwriter.  The thing is, people often end up doing what their parents do.  Daughters of doctors become doctors; there are family dynasties of teachers or lawyers. When you are growing up, you see your parents’ professions as what it means to be an adult, perhaps. 
So, the pressure. From them, no – really not at all. I mean, I want to please them and make them proud, which is a natural impulse for offspring, but I honestly don’t think we compare ourselves. That --  if it comes -- will come from other people. 
Thankfully, though, we’re all very different writers. I say that not because they aren’t good, because they’re very good, but because they got there first, the bastards!, which would make me the derivative one. I don’t think I am derivative though… I hope not. I suppose you just have to read and see.

V: No - you are most definitely your own writer, and one who is going to go far. Thanks for visiting the blog, and for the book. Many congratulations on The Last Kings of Sark, may it fly! It deserves to. Enjoy the journey, and I shall look forward to the next book in due course. 

The Last Kings of Sark is released on November 7th, so you only have another couple of days to wait. It's available from the usual suspects, and can be bought or ordered from all indie book shops. Enjoy!  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Kings-Sark-Rosa-Rankin-Gee/dp/1844089312

WORKING TO A RHYTHM, FINDING EDWIN

My third blogpost for Gladstone's Library,  written a week back now. 

Almost a fortnight now since Gladfest, and a chance to settle into a working rhythm. After a few days of prowling about like a re-homed cat, trying out this chair, and that, I settled at a desk on the Reading Room balcony and have been based there ever since, surrounded on three sides by Gladstone’s own books, and in front of me, an inspiring view to the balcony beyond, the stone-mullioned windows.  Just to my right is the huge bay window at the end of the building, its wonderful detail.

       Every now and then, as the day breaks through my fictitious world and I surface into this beautiful place, I will get up and stretch, move a few feet, (steady on now!) pull a book off the shelf, and read a little. Sometimes, the book will hold scribblings by the great man himself, comments, squiggles in the margin, all no doubt meaning something to him should he return to the book at a later date. He adds his own indexes at the back, and you wouldn’t do that unless you intended to return, would you? Sometimes, I find he has seduced me away from my work for longer that I intended, but I don’t mind. Time here is precious as much for what it holds as for how long it is.

      I suspect I would have liked Gladstone hugely. I would have enjoyed the company of the man who could read a German theology book in beautiful, strong German typescript -  and write a single word - Humbug - at the top of a page. I found that on one of my first days here, and it set the tone rather well, brought a smile of pleasure. 

  

 All the books hold their own intrinsic beauty - but  right behind me are three of my favourites:  the three volumes of The Works of William Blake, Poetic Symbolic and Critical, edited by by Edwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats. The books were published in 1893, and presented to Gladstone the same year by the editors - and come complete with inscription, as so many books do in this library. The inscription, flyleaf, volume one, reads thus:

      The Rt Hon W E Gladstone

from

Edwin J Ellis.

(P.S. My fellow worker being in Ireland at the moment is not able to sign this with me.)

Have you heard of Edwin J Ellis? No, me neither, so I looked him up. He seems to have disappeared from consciousness, apart from his collaboration with Yeats on these Blake books - and to see his autograph made me sad. So I searched about a bit, and found references to Ellis as a painter, a poet, novelist, described as ‘erratic’ and a ‘failure’. OK, so Edwin was fairly normal then! 

          I carried on looking for Edwin, and found one of his poems - The Land of Many Names - with its passing reference to opium... and I wonder. 

       

Isn’t it nice to breathe a little life back into writers? Who knows, maybe one day, people might  be kind enough to do it for this erratic one, long after she is gone.

          The first verse alone is rather beautiful, Edwin. Thanks for writing it. The rest... of its time, I suspect. But that first verse is a keeper.  

The Land of Many Names

There is a place where no surprise

is felt at beauty, or true love tried.

Hate cannot find the gate, nor pride.

There do the spring birds learn to sing

and open their hearts as wide

                                                 as the eyes

of the meadows that wake in spring. 

There the clouds of the golden skies

Find their ruby. The white foam free

of the wave lives there in her maiden glee,

and no hand touches her white side, wild.

The winds cannot hold what they see,

                                                             for she flies

like dreams from a waking child.

Dead lovers there, from the days of Troy,

attain the reward our hearts shall keep,

believing for them in twilight sleep,

the while, as maids at a child-birth wait,

we stay till they call us to peep

                                                  at their joy,

and find in their fate, our fate.

There, while wind through the garden sings

gently and low in the long sunbeams,

they sleep between summer and trees and streams,

they love through their sleep from hour to hour,

in beautiful crimson dreams

                                               like the wings

of the peace-giving poppy flower.

The watchman called it a Land of Rest,

the lonely, a Land of Love, they tell, 

the weary, Eden, whence Adam fell.

But the old who wander the downward slope

deem it Youth, knowing well, 

                                                disposessed,

the Land of Eternal Hope. 

From The Bookman, September, 1894 

Edwin John Ellis was born in 1848, the son of Dr Alexander John Ellis, a Scottish linguist and natural scientist. When in his late teens, Edwin Ellis met John Butler Yeats at Heatherley's art school and the two became good friends, sharing a studio. With John Trivett Nettleship and Sidney Hall the two formed 'The Brotherhood', an informal group of artists working under the influence of William Blake. Along with William Butler Yeats, John Butler Yeats' son, Ellis edited a three-volume edition of The works of William Blake, poetic, symbolic and critical, which was published in 1893. His association with W.B. Yeats also extended to their participation in the Rhymers' Club, with Ellis contributing four poems to The Book of the Rhymers' Club (1892) and six to The Second Book of the Rhymers' Club (1894). He also published several volumes of poetry, including Fate in Arcadia (1892) and Seen in Three Days (1893); the novel The Man of Seven Offers (1895); and the verse drama Sancan the Bard (1895), which served as partial inspiration for Yeats' The King's Threshold (1904). Books illustrated by Ellis include Shakespeare's sonnets, nursery rhymes compiled by his father, and his own works. Ellis died in 1916 at Seeheim, Germany, the birthplace of his wife.

PELT AND OTHER STORIES by Catherine McNamara

I am delighted to welcome Catherine McNamara to the blog, with her short story collection 'Pelt'.  Over to you, me dear!

I had a gallery in Africa. It was tiny. As big as a garage no more. With Nigerian sculptures and Kuba cloth and silver jewellery from Ethiopia. It was a fun thing – I’m no fine arts graduate – and I confess I overpriced the sculptures I liked most so I could pay them off and make them mine.

I earned some money, which went out the window to buy more sculptures, cloth and jewellery, but I was queen of my art garage, looking out of my little window onto the street, with a huge rusted ship’s anchor parked on the hot concrete outside. On rough nights at the bar we ran next door I used to lay out a rug from Mali and fall asleep.

Many years later I came back to Europe (I live in Italy) and found I was writing story after story set in Ghana where I had lived. A pregnant Ghanaian woman tries to keep her German lover when his estranged wife comes to town. A failed doctor comes home to see his mother treat his dying step-sister with disgust. A village boy is aroused by classy French photographs. Even a sex worker – poor Janet in ‘Janet and the Angry Trees’ – is enlisted to care for her Italian lover’s elderly parents!

What to do? I’m not an African (just the mother of one) and most of the stories are set along the seams between worlds, between ‘the world of tin and the world of glass’ (‘Infection’, Pelt and Other Stories). They speak of the cross-over between modern African and European cultures, the long arm of historical exploitation and the residue from this in terms of migration, displacement, new structures of exploitation. Young men with brittle prospects. Young women with a savvy knowledge of the world who might do unsavoury things.

How to write of all of this without being a crafty traveller, a further exploiter of a continent that is not yours? 

Among the first questions I knew I would be asked, this is the one that makes me feel a little queasy. I know I can talk all I want about the rusty ship’s anchor outside my shop and the way the doctor never came when I was having my baby (getting oily palm nut soup after birth wasn’t my idea of champagne but the plantain afterwards was good), but I remain a suburban chick from Sydney who grew up on The Monkees and Gilligan’s Island. I can try, I can borrow, I can mimic. It’s a little scary. What I do know is that my efforts in telling a tale from the interior land of someone else’s nation – even if I called it home – must transcend place and nail the idea of story on the head. 

Tricky Vanessa has also asked me to provide you readers with a treat. Vanessa has asked that I think of a scene within the book, and think of a painter who could possibly paint it. Well, Vanessa doesn’t know that I used to run a gallery, that my walls are crammed with paintings and masks, and that I have been walking about the house for a good while now trying to connect my stories to my décor. It is driving me nuts. But here goes.

There is a swimming pool scene. It is rather saucy but I would love it explained with David Hockney flatness, although I would ask a Ghanaian painter friend (Kofi Agorsor) to do the deed. A young pregnant Ghanaian woman is breast-stroking down the pool towards the palms. There, with his big feet and his printed drawstring trousers, is her German lover Rolfe, who is canoodling with his estranged wife Karina, come to town to reclaim her man. The swimming girl is like a big swollen frog jerking in the water, insecure and embarrassed, approaching the Europeans. I can see Rolfe’s very big feet, sketched with Lucian Freud abandon. 

(Note from V: Will you look at this guy's work... isn't it fab? http://www.agorsor.com)

Lust and dirt from a world of places

Two foolhardy snowboarders challenge the savagery of mountain weather in the Dolomites. A Ghanaian woman strokes across a pool in the tropics, flaunting her pregnant belly before her lover’s discarded wife. A sex worker is enlisted to care for her Italian lover’s elderly parents. Hit by a car in Brussels, a young woman returns to her doctor boyfriend. And in Berlin, Celeste visits her suicidal brother Ray and his partner for the very last time.

Pelt and Other Stories lingers on the cusp between Europe and Africa, between ancient sentiments and modern disquiet.

Thanks so much for having me Vanessa and good luck with your new project!

‘Pelt and Other Stories’ may be ordered directly from the Indigo Dreams Bookshop, or on Amazon or from the Book Depository. Or from Waterstones or your local independent bookshop.

http://www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/catherine-mcnamara-pelt/4578701695

www.amazon.co.uk

www.thebookdepository.com

http://peltandotherstories.blogspot.com

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney and has lived in France, Italy, Belgium, Somalia and Ghana.  Her collection ‘Pelt and Other Stories’, semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize, was published in September 2013. Her stories have been published in Wasafiri, Short Fiction, ‘Wild Cards’ a Virago Anthology, A Tale of Three Cities, Tears in the Fence, The View from Here, Pretext and Ether Books.

BREAKFAST WITH WENDY COPE or GLADFEST!

BREAKFAST WITH WENDY COPE 

or

GLADFEST!  

Friday 6th - Sunday 8th September 2013

The Gladfest buzz started in the middle of last week, when things began to happen not just behind the scenes, but in front. The arrival of two marquees for the lawns in front of the Library, teams of men to erect them. Tantalising... what was going to happen in those? A gardener hard at work in the shape of Jean, visiting Chaplain, and her intrepid voyage of discovery, uprooting and replanting an overgrown rockery and flowerbed. (I am convinced there is a layer  of metaphor below that last sentence. However, the duties of Writer in Residence should include a period of gardening - for no reason other than this: I discovered in my paltry hour or so helping out, that it is rather brilliant for cracking previously insurmountable problems with the oeuvre.) 

On Friday, the Library doors were flung open in more ways than one, and the invasion of the chairs began. The arrival of a stage borrowed from the primary school. Sound system. Lighting. And if anyone was thinking this was an ‘exclusive’ event in all senses of the word, the frequent signs exhorting visitors not only to queue here, but also to tweet @gladlib and #gladfest,  to facebook, and to instagram  photos and comments soon put an end to that.  (Is ‘to instagram’ a verb? Note to self, look that up.) Other signs that something was about to happen: more trays of glasses than normal in the Gladstone Room, bottles of Hendrick’s gin, slices of cucumber and bowls of ice cubes. The arrival of taxi after taxi, the trundle of suitcases on the path. The beehive-like hum in the kitchen. 

Held breath. Would it go well? The first literary festival at Gladstone’s Library.  

Friday, 6.00 pm. Lift-off, and I can tell you that elderflower goes very nicely with Hendrick’s and tonic. The Hendrick’s is thanks to the presence of the wonderful force that is Damian Barr, and it helped a great welcome party get under way for everyone who wished to come, whether writer or non writer, resident or non-resident, staff member or not. 

       Later, in the Theology Room (Actually, in the Library, for those who don’t know) Damian was interviewed by Peter Frances about his wonderful, funny, poignant memoir, Maggie and Me (Bloomsbury). (Yes, I know that should be ‘and I’. However, the narrator is the boy, growing up in Glasgow in the reign of Thatcher, and this title works stupendously well. That was to curtail any pedantry.) Looking back, this event, warm, generous, interesting, sometimes funny, always thought-provoking, set the tone superbly for the whole weekend. 

By Saturday lunchtime, if anyone didn’t know what bibliotherapy was before, they did now.  Ella Berthoud, resplendent in white coat and stethoscope, bibliotherapist extraordinaire (she might even have invented the word...)  let a packed audience in on a diagnosis session, with Mr Barr acting as patient. How fascinating - an analysis of reading habits going back to childhood, likes and dislikes, and reading ‘ailments’ (oh I have so many of those...) culminating in a prescription - a list of guess what - more novels to read as a cure! But novels that the patient, well-read as he is, had not yet read. Ella, whose terrific book The Novel Cure (Canongate)has just been published to great acclaim, was inundated with requests for her ‘surgery’ sessions over the weekend, and was soon sold out. 

These hallowed corridors were filled with people, young and old(er). The dining room overflowed with people grabbing coffees and snacks between events. Some started to relax in the Gladstone Room with the paper then realised there was something more interesting happening, and rushed out to catch whatever it was - including the poetry slam. 

           Leah Edge and Jeanette Wooden from The Reader Organisation ran ‘Make Friends With A Book!’ for children aged between 6 and 10 twice, such was the demand. And Andrew Tate, Senior Lecturer at Lancaster, had the Theology Room spellbound for his talk on Twenty-First Century Gospels - Jesus in Contemporary Fiction. Pullman, Crace, Alderman, Beard, Toibin... (I loved Jim Crace’s Quarantine. I didn’t love Pullman’s Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, but there you are. Chacun a son gout.) 

Waterstones had set up a pop-up store, and was doing a roaring trade, by this point. Books were bought. Books were browsed. Books were signed. The marquees were home to craft stalls, to food stalls. 

Sarah Perry’s lecture, Gladstone, Tennyson, Hallam, was a mesmerising exploration of Victorian friendship, and if there wasn’t an audience member who didn’t mourn the loss of such friendships when she had finished, I’d be surprised. Conversations flowed, afterwards, over gin, wine, coffee. Even on facebook!

         Theatre, radio and television script-writer Shelley Silas’s Scriptwriting workshop was a sell-out. Crime writer Martin Edwards and his cast of thespians, acting out a Victorian crime for the audience to hone their skills as detectives, was a hoot. 

          Stella Duffy’s sparkling talk Wearing Many Hats, left us all inspired, moved, fizzing with energy! (Not easy for a lazy chair-loving animal like moi...) Deborah Wynne, Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at Chester, spoke about the history of Browns of Chester. Performance poet Martin Daws led an interactive poetry workshop for young people. And  Emma Rees, Senior Lecturer in English at Chester - a packed audience hung on her every word as she explored the issue of talking about the female body in Western culture. 

I will have such wonderful memories of this weekend, and am full of gratitude that it took place during my residency. (Yes, I had an event too, but that’s not the point!) It was very special to be able to spend time with other writers here, two of whom had also been writers in residence, and were so delighted to be back ‘home’. Stella Duffy, Sarah Perry. And when people ask, ‘What was your favourite event?’ I won’t be able to answer. 

        People say Gladstone’s Library feeds you, in many many ways, and that is truer than I can explain. Maybe then, a better question is what fed me the most, as well as giving me pure enjoyment?  To which the answer is, Don Cupitt’s event, in conversation with Peter Francis. Sara Perry’s lecture, as it turned out to have a direct bearing on my novel-in-progress. And then, Wendy Cope’s reading, with Lachlan Mackinnon, for different reasons.

So why the silly title, Breakfast with Wendy Cope, which sounds as if it could be a poem by the lady herself? Gladfest was, as I said above, non-exclusive. Open to all. Something of interest for all. And all came. I met such terrific people, had such great natters over snatched coffees. I spent time with writers, published and not yet.  I also spent time with writers who are far far more experienced than I am or will ever be, probably. There is no Green Room, separating the ‘greats’ from the merely ‘good’ and the ‘hoping to be goods’.  At Gladfest, the writers on the stage do not scuttle away after their events, as if they and the rest can not mix, oil and water. 

They mix at Gladfest. It makes quite a good cocktail, actually - Hendrick’s take note. I did have breakfast with Wendy Cope, and I’m not going to tell you what she ate. So there. 

Gladfest was terrific. Congratulations and thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make it so. I am awarding it, and all of you, a medal which looks a little like an exclamation mark. 

GLADFEST !

(This is the text of my third blog post for Gladstone's Library.)

And finally.

I breakfasted with Wendy Cope - 
How ever did I dare?

I dared because right next to her
there was a vacant chair. 

I breakfasted with Wendy Cope 
on toast, and jam, and tea.

I’m wondering now how Wendy coped
when sitting next to me.

DOT DOT DOT...a game of digital consequences...Part II

And here we go - the second para in the terrific Dot dot dot, New Writing South's buzzy brainchild of a crowd sourced  story, kicked off by who else, Peter James. You can hear him read his opening para here: http://www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk/events/dot-dot-dot/#.UidFi6V4Pu0

and here's the second!

Dot dot dot...II

Right now, Jonas had to hide. 

Vermillion day-glo skin-tight shorts and gold lame vest weren’t Jonas’s usual attire, but this was Brighton Pride, the city’s most colourful event, and where better to hide than in a crowd? 

Even better, a parade. He let himself be hugged, kissed, he even sang. He let himself be swept along the sea front by the mass, closer and closer to the old West Pier, where, he knew, whoever had written him that anon email would be waiting.

Pics from here: http://www.heart.co.uk/sussex/news/local/brighton-hove-pride-2013-here/

and here http://www.visitbrighton.com/your-brighton/gay/brighton-pride

http://brightonscenic.co.uk/tour/

A week learning Welsh at Gladstone's Library

This is the text of my first blog post for Gladstone's Library. 

A week learning Welsh

Not content with a whole month in this lovely place, I decided to have a week here busily engaged in learning Welsh, before my residency officially began. Thus it was that the intrepid Mr Gebbie and I joined eight other would-be Welsh speakers on Monday 25th August for a week packed to busting with lessons, games and exercises.  Our tutor was to be Julie Brake, Senior Lecturer in Welsh at Glyndwr University. The details of the course can be found here: http://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/events/welsh-in-a-week.html

A varied bunch we were too.  At one end of the spectrum were those who knew some Welsh, perhaps those who had spoken Welsh as children, and at the other end, those who had had no exposure to the language at all. Ages ranged from (I’m guessing here...) mid- thirties to mid-eighties. 

I fitted somewhere in the middle on most counts. I have Welsh parents and grandparents, and my elders would often drop into Welsh when I was around - I can’t think why. I was at school in Dolgellau for five years from 13 to 18 - formative years - and every Tuesday, morning assembly was conducted in Welsh. We sang Welsh hymns and recited prayers in Welsh. Trouble was, those who didn’t understand Welsh were never told what the words meant... what a missed trick.  The intrepid Mr Gebbie also has Welsh grandparents. It’s our shared heritage.

Julie Brake is simply a gem of a teacher - focussed, engaging and not unwilling to make us work hard! And all with more than a sprinkling of humour. We were incredibly lucky. This was a very practical experience. Our journey focussed on spoken Welsh, and the grammar behind it for those who wanted to know. We worked together in the tutorials for eight and a half-hours per day, between 9.30 am and 9.00 at night, except for Thursday, when we had a much-needed afternoon off.  Julie took us all from 0 to 60 (metaphorically speaking)  in those five and a half days - we who struggled to say our names on  day one (Vanessa ydw i) were soon happily exploring the mysteries of soft and nasal mutation.  We who knew very little if anything were soon tackling a group translation of the history of St David (Dewi Sant).  We who had struggled to say ‘It’s sunny today’ (Mae hi’n heulog heddiw) on day one soon found ourselves telling each other simple stories, using not just the present tense but past and future. On Day six we introduced ourselves as different characters with amazingly inventive backgrounds. And finally, we were brave enough to ask for the words of both Sospan Fach and the other more beautiful national anthem of Wales, and sing! 

Mr Gebbie and I had such a good week. It was worth every penny, and more. Excellent company, unforgettable surroundings, and everyone had a strong sense of achievement at the end. 

It was a real boon to be here, to find my feet in the place I will be living for the next month. I waved goodbye to Mr Gebbie last Sunday, on his way to Chester railway station and the train back to Sussex, and after he’d gone I padded round Gladstone’s Library feeling excited, not a little daunted, and oddly, rather proprietorial. I wonder what ‘proprietorial’  is, in Welsh?

Next year, I hear they are doing Hebrew...

(I hope the Welsh is correct. If not, blame my retention skills...)

'Year of Night' by Kate Beswick

Kate Beswick

I am delighted to welcome the very talented Kate Beswick to my 'umble blog. I met Kate while working on 'The Coward's Tale' at Anam Cara Writers and Artists' Retreat in Ireland, and we have kept in touch since. But more importantly, in the evenings while we were there, we shared snippets of our work. 

     I know Kate does not believe me, but I was blown away, as the cliche goes, by her reading (well, she is an actress, and so the readings were just perfect) but more importantly, the story - the descriptions,  the characters, the prose - stayed with me. St Petersburg, Paris, not now, but decades ago... so well evoked that all who were listening agreed it was as if we were there, not in West Cork. 

     I now have a copy of that novel, Year of Night. Kate has published it herself, having had so many knock-backs, I am astounded. So, folks, I am rather pleased she is here to talk about the book, what's behind it, and her self-publishing experience. 

I am particularly interested in self-publishing. We all hear such negative reports, about the standard of self-pubbed writing out there. However, if you are disheartened about the lack of standards among self-published books, 'Year of Night' will surely put your heart back where it belongs.

V: First - as always - tell us a little about Year of Night? Do you know where you got the ideas  for this novel from? Tell us a little about your experiences of Russia and of Paris - both so beautifully evoked.

Kate: Life is what happens when you’re making other plans as they say. This can be true of novels as well.        

I was working on a project inspired by ‘Poem Without a Hero’ by Anna Akhmatova. The poem has always haunted me creatively, and in the Anna Akhmatova museum in St Petersburg I have been fascinated by the room devoted to it with  the huge wall mural of portraits.
      I began to research the  period, the Silver Age and after. Most of the people mentioned, I discovered, had emigrated to Europe, most of them to Paris where they struggled to keep their lives and culture alive in the face of poverty, unemployment and ultimately, the Second World War.
The temptation with research is to wander off the main road and stroll through the lanes and byways of the period, admiring the view and squirreling  away souvenir images. Akhmatova,  her friends, their friends and their relatives. Artists,  writers, philosophers, their cousins, their lovers. It  was  like going through the looking glass. Oh, I was definitely going to write this project. Sometime soon. Then I read a short paragraph in a memoir, a description of how the author went with other emigrees to greet Akhmatova’s train when after 25 years she was finally allowed out of Russia. She was not allowed to leave the train until she arrived in London, so when the train stopped in Paris, all the remaining emigrees went to the station and were allowed on the train  for a few minutes to greet her. I think it was at this point that my muse (a word one can only use without blushing on the Internet) suddenly spoke up and said ‘Enough  with the research. Sit down and write something.’ So there I was, with a young girl at a railway station and a period of history that had disappeared.  I started writing.
        I did go on reading - as you can see from the  bibliography! I also spent a lot of time in Paris. I went to every place mentioned in memoirs of the period: every house, cafe, church, cemetery. Some of these places no longer exist, some are changed beyond recognition. Still, I walked from place to place as they did, from Billancourt  (where many ex-officers found employment at Renault) to Monptarnasse, around Auteuil, Clamart, Meudon, Sevres.  I went to small houses, blocks of flats, parks, bookshops, cafes. Nothing was left, there were no memorials. Still, a life began to  take shape. I read poetry, letters, short stories, memoirs. I looked at a lot of photographs. I felt I was living in a parallel dimension. It was very addictive.
       And my girl at the railway station? I went backwards and forwards telling myself stories of her life. The book really evolved as I developed characters and relationships. I was writing about courage and survival with honour in a web of social and political chaos. I have never enjoyed writing anything so much in my life.
       I finished the book. It was  absolutely dreadful. It lumbered along, on third person, filled with information that led nowhere, like a cart with its wheels stuck in the mud. It  even bored me.
But I couldn't give it up. I still believed I had a story to tell  and I couldn’t bury it because it wasn’t dead.There was life in  my notes if not in my novel Then I had the click: the notes were in  first person. I threw out my ‘finished’ draft and started again, first person. The story  suddenly came together, moved forward, spoke fluent fiction. The only thing that was unchanged was the girl in the railway station.  It’s still a story of survival but  I hope it happens on the page, moment by moment, like a good performance.

V: I know the novel has had a history - can you tell us something about that?

Kate: OK The book was written, rewritten  and rewritten and I knew I had done the best I could do. I sent it out. Eighty people rejected it. Strangely, this did not upset me. I believed in  the book and I knew that somewhere there were other people who  would feel the same. I have to say that every writer or serious reader who read the book liked it. Some of them were friends, but a lot of them weren’t and I kept reminding myself of that. People who  read things liked it, people who buy things didn’t.No criticism. The criteria, I learned, are different.While the  book  was being rejected, I began another book, ‘Happy Happy’ a story of a family in 1950‘s Hollywood.       

Then I got ill. Let’s not go there. I wrote nothing for  a year. Then I spent a year slowly getting myself back together. I managed a dreadful story (about getting ill I’m afraid) and one chapter of ‘Happy Happy.’ 

V: People will be very interested in the fact that you have decided to publish this way. What was the thought process?

      Kate: Probably due to Divine Guidance, I went to a Guardian workshop on self publishing. It was in a chic location I couldn’t afford to enter otherwise, there was lots of coffee and baked goods, and the leader was slim,attractive and wore a chic black  trouser suit (these things matter to me.) She smiled a lot, and the atmosphere was generally upbeat. Fueled by caffeine, I saw myself in the part  immediately. I already had a black trouser suit. Done.

V: How have you found the experience?

Kate: Self-Publishing, I discovered is an exciting, empowering  and time consuming experience. It’s great to  be in control but being  in control means you have to know all about everything.  As a careless, ‘creative’ person whose previous experience was far from literary, and who can’ t even type,  I had everything to learn. Proof reading, copy editing, layout, cover design, all of it. There is pressure, there are decisions to be made, there are deadlines.  Things go  wrong, and whatever goes wrong, it’s you, the self-publisher who is responsible. There is a small amount of support, but in truth no one else will  ever care as much as you  do. I worked obsessively to learn how these things are done and  how best to do them so that they accurately reflected the theme and style of the book. Because I hadn’t looked at the book in a long time it was easier in a way: I approached  the manuscript from an objective distance which made the errors stand out. It  was at times very scary. At other times I watched myself in surprise, like a mother whose idiot child suddenly recites a poem nicely on Parents Day. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the process of moulding  the product of my imagination into an artifact. The beautiful cover was designed for me by Fiona Bell Currie. 

V: What about publicity and so forth?

Kate: The marketing. Ah, the marketing. I know something about marketing: as an actress,  I was my own product and marketed myself with,  if I may say so, some modest success for most of my working life. I also ran a poetry performance company that toured schools, colleges and festivals, so I knew enough to know  I absolutely  loathe marketing.       Fortunately, in  marketing, unlike other aspects of publishing, one can enlist support. After a false start I found Nathalie, a brilliant PA in Brighton  and an  equally brilliant assistant in  London. I immediately felt comfortable with  both of them ; Deborah (London) is North American and we were on the same  ‘can do’ wave length about getting the word out there. 

V: I read on facebook today that you are personally visiting bookshops. How is that working out?

Kate: We divided London between us and set  out on foot.
It was just like making rounds as an actress, just like pursuing venues with the poetry programmes: I set out  in my black suit with  a copy of the  book(my audition  speech), an information sheet about myself (my CV) and a gracious smile. I offered to  give talks, do ‘author events’ or anything that would help the shop  sell the book.
I was overwhelmed by the response.With only one exception  (you can never win them all) people were friendly, courteous, interested and supportive. Some even suggested shops and libraries I didn’t know about. Every shop I went into agreed to stock the  book. One shop put it in the window.One shop  asked me to come and give a talk.My local newspaper is doing an interview. And the cherry on the sundae: Waterstones Picadilly has agreed to stock the  book with an author event (talk and signing) in November.

V: That's fantastic. Heartwarming. Take heart, writers...

Kate: So what did I get out of all this? Confidence. The knowledge that real faith pays off. A sense of how publishing actually works and what publishers have to take into consideration before they accept a book. These things are good and important  to know. Would I self publish again ? Would I hell. Publishing is hard, demanding work. It’s much harder and less satisfying than actually  writing the book.  Next time, I want the prince to come with the glass slipper in my size. Also I think you do need the assurance that someone beside yourself is willing to invest in  you to prove you have actually reached a standard.  This is not necessarily true, I hasten to add, but I’m  from Hollywood.Now, back  to ‘Happy Happy.’

V: Kate, thank you so much for such brilliant, helpful responses. Lots of good luck with Year of Night. And, of course, with the next!

You can read about the book on the Matador Publishing website, the quality outfit Kate chose to publish her novel, here... http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2168


 KATE BESWICK was born in Los Angeles. She was educated at Smith College and Middlesex University, where she won the short story prize awarded by Shena MacKay. She was an actress for many years on and off Broadway, the National Theatre, the West End and on television. She won the Litchfield-Time Warner novel prize awarded by the late Dame Beryl Bainbridge. Kate now splits her time between London and County Cork.