I have been so, so spoilt today. My boys woke me up way too early because they were excited about all the treats they had in store for me. We went to Arundel which is only a 15 minute drive away but always makes me feel like I’m on holiday. We had lunch and went shopping for goodies, then returned home via the beach. I am in total show off mode, forgive me please.
Category: Uncategorized
Cool female lit zine?
Does anyone know of a good quality litzine run by women, publishing men and women? (but mainly women) A litzine where the editors are super cool, the kind of people you’d like to go for drink with? Where people return to the site loyally, knowing that the stories published will be of a high standard?
Serious question.
Edit: Of course Cella’s Round Trip and Pulp.Net are both off the scale cool, but I know about them!
Two real reviews, and one fake!
Two reviews of mine have just gone live at Pulp Net. Kuzhali Manickavel and Tania Hershman have written very different debut story collections, but I can whole heartedly recommend both, and its not often I can say that!
I contributed a fake review to Jenn Ashworth’s collaboration with Tolu Ogunlesi. You can read the whole online dual blog story at Adore Adorna and here.
Congratulations to Elaine Chiew!
It’s delightful to discover that the winner of the Bridport Prize 2008 is a writer whose work I am familiar with, whose stories I have long admired; Elaine Chiew has won with a story called “Face”, and I am looking forward to reading it. She is a calm, assured, thoughtful writer, and really, her win makes me feel so happy. Her victory says to me that it’s all about the words and craft. Whoooo hooooo Elaine!
Things I wish I had said to Janice Galloway –
1) Anything sensible rather than the breathless, gushy nonsense I babbled at her!
(Ha ha)
Okay, I was a little nervous. The more I thought about it the more I realised that of my revered three (Galloway, Lorrie Moore, Ali Smith) Galloway is the writer who I have respected, admired, and aspired to, for the longest, with an unwavering belief that she really does write the best prose of anyone. She is concise, precise, smart, never sentimental, never baggy or saggy. So, y’know, she rocks. And I honestly get a kick out of recommending her books to others, so that they get to read writing of such quality. It occurred to me that I could meet her and dislike her. It happens right? Your hero up there on a pedestal turns out to be an utter arse. I wondered (because I am the type of person to waste time fretting about things that have not yet happened) if I would still heartily recommend her books. I figured I would, because the writing is what counts, not the person.
Didn’t need to worry at all, she was lovely, and very kind to me. She even gifted me a copy of “Rosengarten” which I am delighted by. She looked amazing, read beautifully, answered questions, and asked a couple herself. She was funny and warm, and the extracts she read from “This is not about me” sounded fabulous. I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into it.
Hurray!
Janice Galloway at Brighton Waterstone’s TONIGHT!!!
Title says it all!
But just in case you’d like a link – LINK
Domestic Violence
I was shocked to read today that 2 women are killed each week in the UK by their partner, or ex partner. TWO A WEEK!
Every minute in the UK the police receive a call for assistance for domestic violence. EVERY MINUTE! This despite the fact that less than half of all incidents remain unreported.
For help, advice, and details on what can be done, please go to Women’s Aid
Ooh, Janice Galloway!
Regular readers will know that I’m a massive fan of Janice Galloway. She is such an amazing writer, and forms one part of the writers-I-aspire-to-and-worship-and-sadly-will-never-be-as-good-as-but-oh-how-they-make-me-hope-trio (Lorrie Moore and Ali Smith are the other two). So I was very excited to hear that she has a memoir coming out in September. A new Galloway publication is cause for happy feelings. BUT GUESS WHAT?
Go on, guess?
We have arranged for her to come to the Brighton branch of Waterstones!
Whooooo hoooooo.
I so want this event to be a success, and urge any people in the area to buy a ticket now!
Isn’t it exciting!
By the way, back here I mentioned that I had ordered in copies of Galloway’s short story collection “Where you find it”, and written a review. I was pleased that we had sold 12 copies. We have sold 29 copies now!
Brilliant post by Jenn Ashworth
I read this today over at Every Day I Lie A Little.
MA in ‘Creative’ Writing.
I am starting a MA in creative writing. You can apply for it by emailing me and if I accept you, you will be allowed to drink my tea at my house and do all the modules. It will cost £3085 and the learning will be ‘experiential’.
Module 1: Dealing with Rejection
I will lock you in my cellar and scream ‘you are crap’ at you at random intervals. Sometimes I will throw things. Every now and again I will come down into the cellar and give you a cuddle and stroke your hair. I will say, ‘such talent!’ and when you are relaxed and smiling I will quickly punch you in your stomach and say ‘but still crap!’
Module 2: Writing Process
I will tie you to my writing chair. I might let you have a cushion. You are allowed to get up to go to the bathroom and to drink water. But nothing else. Your phone will beep a lot and eventually the friends you are ignoring will get angry with you, give up, and go away. When you are trying to write I will randomly delete paragraphs of your work and whisper things like ‘all your friends think you are a pillock’ into your ears.
Module 3: Drafting
Every time you write something I will print it out and show it to all my friends. We will sit in a pub and laugh at it. We will make notes on it in coloured pens. Everything we write will be instructions on how to make it better. We will send you back the pages. You won’t be able to read our writing. You will need to implement all the suggestions into future drafts, even when they are contradictory. We will print out your future drafts and take them back to the pub. This will take a very long time.
Module 4: Publicity and Promotion
I will teach you how to Google yourself. You will do this every day, until you are banned from using the computer at work. At the end of the course you will have to drink a bottle of gin and then read your work to me. I will talk loudly and send text messages to random people while you are reading. I will ask you to sign your book and then sell it on ebay. I will send you the ebay link. No-one will buy your book even though the bidding starts at 1p and the postage is free.
There might be some more modules. I am not sure yet. For the full MA experience I will loose your final submission and give you a certificate I made on MS Word and laminated at work. I will look you up a few years later and me and all my friends will tell you you can’t write because you did my MA course and you now sound just like everyone else who has done it. Then I will ask you for some more money in return for providing ‘editorial help’ with your manuscript.
Jenn Ashworth is very funny and clever, and this sounds like an excellent course for any budding writers.
You can also find Jenn and her lies at Sh
Don’t forget!
I was tagged last week by Kay Sexton
She was asked by Patti Abbott to nominate a title as a Forgotten Book. Or as Patti herself said of the idea “This is the first of what I optimistically hope will become Friday recommendations of books we love but might have forgotten over the years. I have asked several people to help me by also remembering a favorite book. I also asked each of them to tag someone to recommend a book for next Friday. I’m worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next. “
It’s a wonderful book describing a woman’s grief and unravelling life. It feels familiar and yet illuminates with such precision that it astonishes me. It melds wit with empathy and employs trailing sentences and playful typography that all work towards the creation of a very ‘real’ character in Joy (ho ho).
I was deeply moved when I first read it, and still feel surprised that it doesn’t seem to have the recognition it deserves. Galloway is a superb writer who inspires me greatly.
I get to play tag now, so next Friday I will be very interested to read which book Kirsty recommends us.
Sara Crowley 