Joanna Danks offered worldwide publishing deal

Nottingham Writer’s Studio member offered worldwide publishing deal from Piatkus following Writing Industries Conference

Nottingham Writer’s Studio member Joanna Danks has been offered a worldwide publishing deal from Piatkus for her book, “In The Blender”. Her work was selected for an agent interview at the Writing Industries Conference 2010 with Oli Munson of Blake Friedmann Literary, TV and Film Agency, who is now her agent.

The book is creative non-fiction – a humorous guide to blending families, aimed at single mothers who are setting up home with single fathers.

Lyric Lounge Leicester

July 30 – August 1 2010 will see New Walk Museum transformed into ‘Lyric Lounge Leicester’ – an enchanting performance space celebrating the power of live literature. Events are part of a region-wide series of mini-festivals taking place throughout 2010, following on from the massive success of last year’s ‘Lyric Lounge Leicester’. Alongside workshops and performance opportunities for local artists, audiences can feast on a variety of commissions and jaw- dropping lyrical moves by established poets.

http://www.lyriclounge.co.uk

John Hegley
“There’s warm wit aplenty, both in the poetry and in the engaging banter that sets the scenes,” Chortle. Hegley’s new show ‘Adventures of Monsieur Robinet,’ delves deeply into the world of one of the UK’s most prolific storytellers. Radio regular, published writer, and popular glasses wearer, John Hegley has made his mark everywhere. From sell out shows at Edinburgh Festival to comedy festivals worldwide, his poems about dogs, glasses and a whole lot more, have really gone the distance. John’s poems are renowned for being deeply humorous, personal and emotional. Marvel at his adventures in rhyme, rhythm and mandolin plucking, from someone whose background fuses Luton mundanity and glorious French culture. Catch him perform on Sat 31 July, 7pm. Tickets £10/ £5. Suitable for ages 7 plus with guidance.

Mark Gwynne Jones
‘inspired…one of the most accomplished performance poets in the land…drawing the audience into a world where things are not quite what they seem.’ The Guardian Eccentric, oddball poetry that makes for a unique experience and has made Mark a firm favourite in Edinburgh, at Buxton Festival Fringe and numerous venues across the UK. See him perform with his band Psychicbread, for a mesmerising fusion of music, poetry and humour. From a love affair with an orange girl, who had one too many sun bed sessions, to steering a Sherman Tank through rush hour, their work is compelling, contagious and surreal.
Mark and Psychicbread headline WORD! – Sun 1 August, 7pm. Tickets are £4/ £3. Suitable for ages 13 plus.

Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze
Jamaica born artist Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze is the world’s first female Dub Poet and has performed on every continent, apart from the Antarctic. Her published works ponder social and political issues, as well as her own experience of mental health. Jean is a Bloodaxe Poet and the author of seven collections of poetry and fiction. Catch her perform on Fri 30 July, 1pm, at Lyrical Lunchtime (FREE- just turn up) or leading a workshop inspired by museum objects on Sun 1 August, 2.30pm (FREE but booking essential – check website for details).

Andy Craven Griffiths
“If Macbeth had been into hip hop, he’d have sounded a bit like this.” Apples and Snakes Slam champion for Manchester Lit Festival 2004, Glastonbury 2005 and Munich 2007, Andy has wowed his fair share of audiences. A regular on BBC Radio 1 and 2, his work crosses exciting territory between poetry and rap. Far from being just a pretty face, Andy’s work is thought provoking and delivered with breathtaking ease. Andy comperes and performs as part of urban poetry competition ILUVLYRICS (suitable for ages 13 plus) – Fri 30 July, 7pm. Tickets £5/ £3 (performers get in free and need to sign up at 6pm on the night).

All tickets for evening events are available from The New Walk Museum Box Office: 0116 225 4900. For the full ‘Lyric Lounge Leicester’ line up, including FREE workshops, film screenings, after show parties, and open mic and mentoring opportunities, visit www.lyriclounge.co.uk

Workshops can be booked via: word@wordpoetry.co.uk

Can you help get Everybody Reading?

The Literature Network are proud to be a partner in the Everybody’s Reading festival which will run from 2nd-10th October 2010, and we want to know if you can help get Everybody Reading in Leicester?

We are looking for people and organisations who love reading to join in with the Everybody’s Reading festival between 2nd – 10th October 2010. Special reading events will be taking place all over the city in schools, libraries, community centres, theatres, shops and restaurants. If you are someone who loves reading and would like to help, or a venue that would like to host a reading event, we want to hear from you.

The deadline for small grants and to get details of your event listed in the Everybody’s Reading newspaper is Friday 23rd July 2010.

Everybody’s Reading is part of Whatever It Takes, a pioneering scheme to get every primary school child in Leicester reading, and is organised in partnership with Leicester City Council, the Literature Network and Leicester Libraries.

Small grants of around £200 will be available to help support events by voluntary and community groups and elsewhere if neccesary.

Look at the the Everybody’s Reading blog for updates about the festival: http://everybodysreading.wordpress.com

Get in touch with the festival organisers to discuss your ideas and get help planning an event: Damien Walter – damien@charnwood-arts.org.uk or Ellie Lee ellen.lee@sdsa.net

Follow us on:

Twitter : http://twitter.com/GetLestaReading
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124923777531151&ref=ts

Logan performs at trio of summer festivals

Following the publication of her first book and a recent trip to Iceland, Leicester writer Siobhan Logan is now looking forward to taking her stories about the Arctic round a series of summer festivals. Next month she will join Susan Richardson, a Cardiff writer, to form the Polar Poets. They are staging their new show, Arctic-ulate, at the Wrexham Science Festival on the 2nd July. Logan is also booked to appear afterwards at the country’s largest poetry festival at Ledbury on 7th July, alongside Dr. Darren Wright, a scientist from the University of Leicester. She will round off this trio of festivals by presenting her own show, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights’ Journey, at the Southwell Poetry Festival in Nottinghamshire on 13th July.

Logan said of her recent research trip to Iceland: ‘Of all the Arctic places I have visited, Iceland was the most beautiful, wild and unearthly. It was like being dropped on another planet. We saw the smoking volcano in the distance but it was between eruptions so no ash. My head is still full of lava fields, frozen waterfalls and Icelandic sagas. And we caught the most breathtaking display of the Northern Lights on our first night!’

Previously, she has travelled to Arctic Norway to research the Northern Lights for her book, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights’ Journey (published Original Plus 2009). Her book explores ancient stories of the Northern Lights told by indigenous Arctic peoples as well as the science of the aurora borealis. She will be combining pictures from her travels with science, poems and music to convey the magic of this wilderness in her summer shows.

For dates and more information about Siobhan Logan’s upcoming shows please see:

www.siobhanlogan.co.uk

http://siobhanlogan.blogspot.com/

http://polarpoets.blogspot.com/

Large signs Jeff Stewart AKA The Bill’s Reg Hollis

Leicestershire playwright Keith Large has put the finishing touches to his summer production by recruiting a headline actor.

Jeff Stewart, known to millions as Reg Hollis in The Bill for 24 years, is joining Laughs from Leicestershire to perform in Keith’s main play, Prima Donna Island, at Buxton, Cambridge, London and Edinburgh.

It’s a dream return to the stage for Stewart after 30 years, and football-fan Large, labels him as his ‘top signing’.

“Jeff turned down Shakespeare to join us,” he says. “We auditioned him in Loughborough and haven’t publicised his forthcoming appearances anywhere yet.”

“The guy’s been absolutely fantastic, a real character and a team player,” says Large, who has three plays also including Whine Fever and The Ticket Collector about to go under the national spotlight.

“I am really excited about the next few weeks. Altogether I have a fantastic, upbeat and very positive cast and, as it says on the tin, we’re having lots of laughs, both on and off the stage.”

Laughs from Leicestershire will be presenting three one-act plays at Buxton on July 13, Cambridge July 22, London, August 1st and on the famous Prince’s Street in Edinburgh from August 15-21.

Keith Large and his cast.

Mark Goodwin – Shod

When Sidney Realer experiences a moment of revelation in the supermarket aisles, it sets him off on a pilgrimage through a frightening and familiar contemporary landscape. With narrative roots in the biblical, mythological and folk traditions, Shod is a twenty-first century parable, spirited and dark in equal measure, taking place in the clone-town wilderness, fearlessly singing the songs of our all our wrongs.

“Mark Goodwin’s Shod takes us for a walk on the wild side of poetic adventure and it’s a treat.”

- Geraldine Monk

Launch:

Leicester Shindig! – SHODFEST – to celebrate the launch of Mark Goodwin’s new collection, Shod

Monday 9th August 2010 from 7pm FREE entry

The Looking Glass, 68-70 Braunstone Road, Leicester

With readings by: Mark Goodwin, Lydia Towsey, Miffy Ryan, Pam Thompson, Kerry Featherstone, Steve Carroll, Simon Perrill, George Toouli PLUS more TBC.

OPEN MIC available – Yet only if thou shalt perform poems that are unto thee truly to do with shoes!

Listen out for Shodcast digital audio poems, spoken and mixed by Mark Goodwin with backing vocals from Nikki Clayton – FREE to listen to online at Nine Arches Press in July.

Published by Nine Arches Press http://www.ninearchespress.com/

Lawson-West LOROS Poetry Contest

Lawson-West solicitors are pleased to announce the result of their poetry competition to raise funds for LOROS. Entry to the competition was free but entrants who gave a donation to LOROS received feedback on their poem. The winner is Mrs M M Henderson with “The Boy.”

Judge Emma Lee commented, “It was great to see that all entrants made a donation to LOROS and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading and giving feedback on all the poems. Mrs Henderson’s poem won because it was a thought-provoking poem that told a story through a monologue.”

This was one of a series of initiatives from Lawson-West solicitors to raise funds for LOROS throughout 2010.

About the judge

Emma Lee’s poetry collection “Yellow Torchlight and the Blues” was published by Original Plus. Emma reviews for The Journal, Assent and Sphinx magazines regularly as well as on her blog where she is an approved reviewer for Simon & Schuster. She has previously judged poetry and short story competitions for Leicester Writers’ Club, Nottingham Writers’ Club (twice), King Edward VII School Business Innovation Centre’s Children’s Poetry Competition, and has been a filter judge for Leicester Poetry Society’s Open Poetry Competition and Leicester Poetry Society’s Children’s Poetry Competition

The winning poem:-

The Boy

There was this boy, only a laddie,
Not more than twelve or thirteen.
It was a long time ago
But I’ve never forgotten.

Late afternoon the heat is terrible,
Sand burns your feet.
I was big, sweaty and close to my time.
From the word go I’d resented this baby.
I’d got my brood, didn’t need another.
It was one of them fooling around
So the morning’s water got tipped up
Then running away and I was forced
To go down to the well again.
No water, no supper.

Cursing, I filled up and was dragging back
When a hand covered mine and a voice said,
“Mother, let me carry it for you.”
I was that surprised, I let go. Mother!

We didn’t speak much. I hadn’t the breath
For the uphill climb to our house.
He took it to the door, set it down and ran off
I only managed to gasp, “Thank you…”

That night the baby came.
Not a hard birth as births go.
Soon after we had to leave Nazareth and make
The long trek down to Jordan
Where we’ve been settled these twenty years.

News arrives late in our small village.
We did hear that back in the spring
A good man from Nazareth had been done to death
By the Romans. A cruel race the Romans.
It set me wondering. Not that I’ve anything to go on.
I didn’t even know his name.
But there was something about that boy.

M M Henderson

Dan Tunstall Shortlisted for Bransford Boase Award

Leicester writer Dan Tunstall is one of seven authors shortlisted for this year’s Branford Boase Award, given to an outstanding first novel for young people, for his Big and Clever, published by Five Leaves in Nottingham. The Branford Boase Award is the premier national award for new published authors writing for young people. The award, unusually, also recognises the role of the editor in identifying and nurturing new talent.

Dan Tunstall’s is a controversial young adult book set within a group of football hooligans. It is very much about rites of passage, self-confidence and young people trying to fit in with the culture around them at school. The author offers no easy solutions to these difficult issues. He is currently working on his second novel, Out of Towners, due to be published by Five Leaves in 2011.

The Branford Boase Award’s past winners include Meg Rosoff and Jenny Downham. Julia Eccleshare (Guardian children’s books editor) chairs the judging panel while Jacqueline Wilson has donated the prize money for the winner, and will present the award at a celebration on Wednesday 14th July.

For further information see www.branfordboaseaward.org.uk, www.dantunstall.com and www.fiveleaves.co.uk

Keith Large goes to Edinburgh

With or without the World Cup, Loughborough writer Keith Large will definitely be scoring a hat-trick this summer. In January his short story ‘The Tisbech Terror’ won the Freelance Market News’ national short story competition. In July, he sees three of his one act plays being performed at The Buxton International Fringe Festival. Then in August, the same trio production, aptly named ‘Laughs From Leicestershire’, has been chosen for a 7 night run in the centre of Edinburgh at the greatest Fringe Festival on Earth.

Keith explains, ‘When the call from the promoter came saying she wanted me to take the production to a main theatre during the same week as the Military Tattoo I thought it really doesn’t get any bigger than this. We’ve a very talented cast on this production and I’m ecstatic they are to be given the stage they truly deserve. For performers, Edinburgh is the place to be.’

Keith’s three plays ‘Whine Fever’, ‘The Ticket Collector’ and ‘Prima Donna Island’ will be performed at The Merchants Hall Theatre, just off Princes Street during the main week of The Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

To celebrate Keith Large’s success the Literature Network is happy to present a specially recorded podcast of ‘The Carrot Nappers’ a comedy farce that shows off Keith’s trademark style.

Listen to The Carrot Nappers here.

New Walk Magazine

New Walk is a new magazine for poetry and the arts, published each spring and autumn. Our aim is to publish the highest quality poetry, and to be a forum for the best work of experimentalists, formalists and everything between. The magazine also carries insightful articles, features, reviews, interviews, fiction and art.

Issue 1 will be published in October 2010, and will include work by David Mason, Andrew Motion, Mark Ford, Alison Brackenbury and Christine McNeill, among others.

From within the UK, annual subscriptions to New Walk (two issues) are £15. Single issues cost £8. These prices are inclusive of postage and packaging. Please make cheques payable to ‘New Walk Magazine’ and send with your name and address to:

New Walk Magazine c/o Nick Everett
School of English, University of Leicester
University Road
Leicester LE1 7RH

We do not recommend sending cash in the post.
From outside the UK, please subscribe via our secure online shop. Visit www.tinyurl.com/newwalkmag for details.

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