One man band

Small presses are often based on one individual. Is that a bad thing? Ross Bradshaw considers. Read more

The Speculators

A group for writers of speculative fiction (Sci-fi, fantasy, horror and beyond…) in and around Leicester. We meet every Wednesday to write together, critique new writing and discuss the business of writing. (Which often happens after hours in the pub!)

If you are interested in writing speculative fiction, whether you are brand new and unpublished or a New York Times bestselling novelist, you are welcome to join.

We meet on Wednesday evenings, 7-9 at the Friends Meeting House on Queens Rd, Leicester

For more information please contact: damiengwalter@gmail.com

Hello Hubmarine present MADNESS

Hello Hubmarine present

MADNESS

Saturday 17^th October at Big Blue Coffee Co. from 8pm.

Back with another fantastic  night of fiction, poetry & live music film, the Hubmariners will perform some of their personal pieces ranging from gentle enigmatic inner monologues to politically active and personally empowered spoken word, via stories of strange happenings and a song about night.

Featuring installations by community artist Nicci Wilson and guest acts including poet Mike Wilson, comedian  James Hately, plus acoustic folk music and a selection of largely unseen magical and inventive short films from around the world.

Plus Open Mic

Hello Hubmarine is a collective of writers, musicians, producers and thinkers hell bent on creating a better future through writing.

Hello Hubmarine Info 07973 480098 info@timetravelopps.co.uk

Top 10 Literary Bums

That writing is almost exclusively by and for the middle-classes is evidenced by the glee with which journalists pore over JK Rowling’s early life. Here is this poor single mother saved from her dreadful life by that behemoth Potter. No comment that this life is actually real life for a large number of people where bills loom like ships coming out of the fog and who have little of no chance of ever owning that Woolfian dream of a room of their own.
(1) Jack Kerouac is perhaps the most famous writer who describes life on the other side of the breadline. ‘On The Road’, is a post-archetypal journey, west across fifties America. This frontier was a bum one, living by the seat of your pants. There is a certain freedom to it; no job, no money. The woman, and the men. Kerouac was, after all, the sometime lover of Neal Cassady, his travelling companion.

Kerouac, along with his fellow beats, Burroughs, Ginsberg, while may be the first to document this new America was only playing at being a bum. Safely middle-class he had his mother’s to return to where he could type out his experiments knowing that three square meals a day would be provided. Along with the alcohol that eventually killed him.

(2) Charles Bukowski was disdainful of the beats, with which he was clumped. Appearing at a reading with Burroughs, they resolutely ignored each other. The life of a bum was Bukowski’s life, the drink, the dead-end jobs. It was no pose, although he himself became something of a cause célèbre.

‘Post Office’, his first novel, an autobiographical account of his off and on life as a postal worker, was a document of this experience. Written in just a few weeks, it went on to sell millions.

Bolstered by this, Bukowski exerted his influence, or the moolah did, publishing never being one to miss a beat. His own hero at the time was out of print. Bukowski says he discovered John Fante in his local library and it was reading him that made him want to write, or made he realise what writing could be about.

(3) Fante’s three early novels ‘The Road to Los Angeles’, ‘Wait Until Spring, Bandini’ and ‘Ask the Dust’ tell the story of Arturo Bandini, living in depression era Los Angeles, trying to make it as a writer, living in flop-houses, hungry and aching for love. This is the American dream for what it is for many; just a dream.

(4) As dreams are passed from father to son, Fante’s son Dan also became a writer. He also inherited the love of alcohol, the dislocation. His first three novels ‘Mooch’, ‘Chump Change’ and ‘Spitting off Tall Buildings’, are thinly disguised autobiography. They tell the story of his own alcoholism, living on the fringes of American society, not working, or working as a cab driver, a window cleaner, telesales, one step from drink, drugs, madness.

But why read of such things? Is it as William Boyd says, reading as empathy? For me I read to find myself, and to escape myself. Find myself in people who have no hope, no future. Escape myself in history, adventure, drama.

(5) George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ I first read because at the time my dad was living the life of a bum. It was something to aspire to.

“Don’t ever get a mortgage,” he said, as if this was something I could ever aspire to. Instead I was cursed with his love of books.

For all these writers (6) Rimbaud was something of a template. He is the archetypal artist as outsider. As a teenager he wrote brilliant poetry and was transported by Verlaine to 19th century French society which he duly scandal by such antics as wiping his arse with another poet’s poems and becoming the lover of Verlaine. They moved to England where they lived in poverty, writing in the British Museum because heating and lighting were free.

Rimbaud eventually grew up and became something of a gun merchant in Ethiopia. Perhaps it should be time for me to get my application in to Haliburton. If only I didn’t have the pacifism of a Methodist.

Better be like (7) Genet; beautiful prose, sordid life. If you want sex, and prostitutes and prisons then Genet is your man. Start with ‘The Thief’s Journal’. He eschewed personal property and lived his life out of a suitcase. He was engagé at least – pro-Palestinian, supporter of the Black Panthers, and later of the gay rights movement. He was both a bum and believed in something.

(8) Raul Nunez’s Antonio (from ‘The Lonely Heart’s Club’) and (9) Willy Vlautin’s Frank Flannigan (‘The Motel Life’) are looking for love. The former lives in a sleazy Barcelona hotel dumped by his wife. He mixes with low-life, drug addicts in his search for someone special.

Flannigan inhabits motels, one after another, dreaming of his girlfriend, forced to turn tricks by her mother and his brother who killed a kid. Their existence moves ever downwards. No future.

If capitalism works it is because it is self-perpetuating, an endlessly recreating myth.

(10) William Boyd would have it that his life is out there for all of us, not wealth, but its obverse. Life, he posits, is precarious. Adam Kindred the hero of his latest novel, ‘Ordinary Thunderstorms’, loses everything, and descends into a London’s underworld of bums and drifters.
This is the riches to rags story of our recession age. A cautionary tale, perhaps, for the haves. They are, after all, the people who read.

Drew Gummerson’s first novel ‘The Lodger’ was published in 2002. It was a finalist in the Lambda Awards in the States. Drew’s latest book ‘Me and Mickie James’ was published by Jonathan Cape in July 2008. Drew is also an award winning short story writer, his short fiction being widely published and featured on Radio 4.

EMIT September 2009 – Librarians to the barricades

Connecting the literature community
A Literature Network publication
http://literaturenetwork.org

Getting free public libraries was a struggle. So what can we do to keep them? Ross Bradshaw leads the discussion in this months selection of literary blogs, alongside praise for real books from Helen Jaeger and James Burt’s attempt to answer the eternal question asked of all author – where do ideas come from? This September the Literature Network is also seeking an event coordinator for the upcoming Writing Industries Conference, and performance poetry powerhouse Apples & Snakes require a Director. And our creative showcase returns with a profile of fantasy novelist Mark Charan Newton.

For all this and more, read on!

Damien Walter, Literature Network Coordinator

ARTICLES and NEWS

Mark Charan Newton

Our creative showcase feature returns with a profile of Nottingham fantasy author Mark Charan Newton. After working in bookselling, Mark moved into editorial positions at imprints covering film and media tie-in fiction, and later, science fiction and fantasy. He currently lives and works in Nottingham. His first novel The Reef was published by Pendragon Press. Nights of Villjamur, his second novel, is published by Pan Mcmillan in the UK and Random House in the US. Read more

• Rod Maddocks shortlisted for ITV crime award
• Writers in Residence
• Writing Industries Conference 2010

Read more News

BLOGGERS

Librarians! To the barricades!!

Getting free public libraries was a struggle. So what can we do to keep them? OK, I know that the Old Etonians are about to take over the country from the other mob but if I were to start planning a socialist and green world, the first thing I’d do would be to invent libraries. Read more

• Festivals. What are they good for?
• Critical Risk. An Attempt
• Where do ideas come from?
• In Praise of Real Books

Read more blogs

EVENTS

Fay Weldon

Fay Weldon will be speaking about her new book Chalcot Crescent as part of the Oundle Festival of Literature’s autumn programme. Chalcot Crescent is vintage Weldon: satirical, political and fantastical, sparkling with intelligence, observation and wit. Prophetic, clever and insightful, this is a novel for our times and our future, told with effortless wit and imagination by one of Britain’s finest novelists. Read more

• FantasyCon 2009
• Readings at Beeston
• Oundle Festival Writer’s Conference

Find more events near you.

OPPORTUNITIES

Event Coordinator

The Literature Network and Writing East Midlands are seeking a skilled event coordinator to deliver the annual Writing Industries Conference in March 2010. The WIC Event Co-ordinator will be responsible for finalising the conference programme, liasing with the conference venue and effectively publicising the event. The Event Coordinator will be managed by the Literature Network Coordinator and supported by Writing East Midlands. Read more

• Storyteller (with magic!) Wanted
• Writer’s Studio Hot Desk
• Fresh Blood Contest
• Director – Apples and Snakes

Many more opportunities for writers.

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Librarians! To the barricades!

Getting free public libraries was a struggle. So what can we do to keep them? Read more

Duncan Hamilton

Duncan Hamilton
Sports Journalist and author at Clowne Community Centre

on Friday 9th October 2009
from 7.30 – 9.00pm

Tickets £3.00/£1.50 concession
available from Clowne Library

01246 810675

Manga Elements

Holmewood Library, 29th October

Manga & Graphic Artist
Sally Thompson
will be holding a workshop for
12+yrs
from 10.30 – 11.30am

Places limited – get your FREE ticket from the library on
 01246 851307

Readings at Beeston

Between September 2009 and March 2010

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Six months, six guests, six intimate readings,exclusively selected and performed for Nottinghamshire Libraries

Reading 1
Monday 28 September
Poet and academic, Bernard O’Donoghue, reads from
the epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Reading 2
Monday 26 October
Emeritus Professor, John Lucas, reads Milton’s
Paradise Lost

Reading 3
Monday 30 November
Poet, Penelope Shuttle, reads from the work of her late
husband, Peter Redgrove

Special afternoon workshop
Creative reading and writing workshop with
Penelope Shuttle
2pm – 4pm
Booking essential: limited to 12 participants
Tickets: £5 or £8 including the evening reading
(£3 and £5 for concessions)

Reading 4
Monday 25 January
BBC Radio Nottingham’s John Holmes reads from Peter
Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor

Reading 5
Monday 22 February
Award-winning writer, Nicola Monaghan, reads from
Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Reading 6
Monday 29 March
Deirdre O’Byrne of Nottingham’s Irish Studies Group
reads from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days

All readings take place between 7pm and 9pm
Tickets: £6 (£4 concessions)
Beeston Library, Foster Avenue
Beeston NG9 1AE
Telephone: 0115 925 5168

Sophie Snell’s Seven Deadly Sins

The Voice Box,
Forman Street,
Derby DE1 1JQ
Tickets £6 / £4
Cakes & Coffee on sale

Full disabled access
Car parking: on Abbey Street Car Park
Group bookings available – contact roy@flyingdonkeys.co.uk or 0795 875 7008
email list: flyingdonkeysderbystorytelling@live.co.uk

Wednesday 14 October

Sophie Snell, with her show
Seven Deadly Sins
MC John Fearon

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.” Do you have anything to confess? A young girl hiding in the confessional, overhears her neighbours’ confessions …lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride… whispered revelations of sinning and secret desires. As she listens with growing unease stories unfold that should never be told.

Premiered as part of our Fifth Wednesday Project in April, Sophie has worked on the collection of stories, and we can now bring you all seven sins, in deadly succession.
At turns dark and comic, this show offers twisting tales from the stones and bones of the British Isles – where the Devil watches in delight and angels weep …

One of our very own Flying Donkeys, Sophie has rapidly built up a reputation as a lively and engaging storyteller with wicked sense of humour. For more information on Sophie, see her website www.sophiesnell.co.uk

”So absorbing. I didn’t know storytelling was like this.”

“Delightful storytelling – great fun and hugely enjoyable – we didn’t want it to end!”

“Having seen you tell a lot of stories this is the moment when I saw a real star. Fantastic storytelling – well done!”

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