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RLF Fellows’ News: December 2024

Publishing

Julian Evans’ new book Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War is a personal history of Odesa, the city he discovered in 1994 and home to Natasha, his future wife. Family tensions become a microcosm of the city’s shifting atmosphere, sharpening with Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, at which point Evans returns to live in the city under bombardment.

Described by Paul Theroux as ‘an important book’ and Rory Stewart as “Macabre, surreal, haunting, beautifully observed and darkly moving”, Undefeatable is published by Scotland Street Press and will be available from 2 December.

As NATO recently marked 1000 days of Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine on 19th November 2024,  Julian spoke as part of The Institute of Psychoanalysis’s Political Mind event series alongside Ukrainian Psychoanalyst Igor Romanov. He also appeared on the Telegraph’s podcast Ukraine: The Latest, which you can listen to here.

Rosemary Jenkinson’s debut poetry collection Sandy Row Riots has been published by Arlen House after a launch event at the Irish Secretariat in Belfast. 

The poems deal with life in Northern Ireland, both past and present, paramilitary and suburban. Fellow poet Moyra Donaldson describes the collection as “a tour de force; truthful and fearless. The long poem, ‘Westward Unbound’, is heartbreaking in its honesty and tenderness.”

Sandy Row Riots will be internationally distributed by Syracuse University Press.

Rahila Gupta’s forthcoming book Planet Patriarchy: Global Tales of Feminism and Oppression will be published in 2025 and is available to preorder from now from Hurst Publishers.

Co-written with Beatrix Campbell, the book is described by the publishers as “a continent-crossing panorama of women’s rights, women’s oppression and women’s politics in the 21st century… exploring eight very different societies. From the extraordinary anti-capitalist women’s revolution in Kurdistan to the theocracies of Islamic State and Saudi Arabia, China’s one-party state to Iceland’s democracy and to South Africa, Russia and El Salvador”.

Translator Jamie Lee Searle’s latest book, Freedom: Memoirs 1954-20 by Angela Merkel which she co-translated with Jo Heinrich, Lucy Jones, Simon Pare, Ruth Martin, Sharon Howe,  Alice Tetley-Paul and lead translator Shaun Whiteside has recently been published by Pan Macmillan.

Broadcasts

Rosemary Jenkinson‘s 2021 radio drama, Lives In Transit, is to be due for broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 12 December.

Lives In Transit tells the story of Asha, who attempts to find a life for herself and her daughter in Ireland. Having suffered rape and violence in her native Somalia at the hands of the terrorist cult Al-Shabaab, Asha pays a trafficker to transport them to Ireland. Threatened with deportation by the Irish government, Asha flees northwards to the UK in a desperate attempt to avoid being returned to almost certain death. There begins an endless cycle of to-ing and fro-ing between Britain and Ireland, as neither country seems prepared to accept her claim for asylum.

Mark Blacklock recently launched the audio zine OFFAL, which is accompanied by a journal of the same name, which he co-edits.

The second issue of the journal will be published in early 2025, with performances in London and Manchester at the end of January. 

More here.

Events and appearances

Nicola Baldwin’s short film The Nervous State has been released as part of the University of Sheffield’s Nervous State project, a collaboration with Professor Julie V. Gottlieb, which focuses on dramatising ‘history from within.’

Set in 1938, the film follows F. L. Lucas after he is commissioned to write a journal recording his travels, opinions, and frustrations with British inaction against Hitler. Meanwhile, his artist wife Prudie designs his play The Lovers of Gudrun for the Stockport Garrick Theatre. As Czechoslovakia is occupied and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain refuses to act, fault lines in their personalities and marriage crack under pressure of impending war.

Watch The Nervous State here.

Productions

Trish Cooke has written the Christmas pantomime Pinocchio for Stratford East Theatre, a reimagined telling of the classic fairytale by Carlo Collodi.

The show sees the wooden puppet Pinocchio and his poor toymaker father Geppetto make their home in Stratford. Will Blue Rinse Fairy and Krik Krak the cricket be able to keep Pinocchio off the crooked path as he battles the trials and tribulations of becoming a ‘real boy’?

Playing now until 4 January 2025 at the Stratford East Theatre, London E15 1BN. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the Stratford East website.

Roy Williams’ play The Lonely Londoners transfers to the Kiln Theatre on 10 January 2025, following its sold-out run at Jermyn Street Theatre.

Adapted from the 1956 novel by Sam Sevlon and directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye, The Lonely Londoners explores the hopes, dreams and realities of generation Windrush as Henry ‘Sir Galahad’ Oliver, newly arrived from Trinidad, is impatient to start his new life in London. Carrying just pyjamas and a toothbrush, he bursts through Moses Aloetta’s door only to find Moses and his friends already soured on city life. Will the London fog dampen Galahad’s dreams? Or will these Lonely Londoners make a home in a city that sees them as a threat?

Buy tickets here.

Awards

Charlie Hill and C. D. Rose are among the six finalists of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.

Founded in 2006 by the world’s first Professor of Short Fiction, Ailsa Cox, the £10,000 prize remains the only national literary award to recognise excellence in a published, single-authored short story collection. The competition celebrates emerging and established writers, highlighting the diverse voices and exceptional talents of contemporary short story writers across the UK and Ireland. 

WritersMosaic contributor Clementine E Burnley has won the James Berry Poetry Prize. Named in honour of James Berry OBE, one of the first black writers in Britain to receive wider recognition, the prize aims to assist young and/or emerging writers of colour with mentoring to help them develop their work, followed by publication of their debut book-length collection with Bloodaxe Books.

Judge Nathalie Teitler described Clementine’s work as “incredibly rich”, adding that it “explores the diasporic experience in which song, gesture and ritual take centre stage.” You can hear Clementine read ‘Berber for Water’ from her first pamphlet Radical Pairings, on the WritersMosaic website.

Francis Spufford was a finalist for the 2024 Historical Writers Association Gold Crown award with his novel Cahokia Jazz,  described by publishers Faber and Faber as “a thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently”.

The Historical Writers Association judges praised Cahokia Jazz for its “dark, gritty storytelling that conjures time and place so well that you can hardly believe it never existed.”

To see the full list of finalists, visit the Historia magazine website.

Philip Womack was recently appointed a Fellow of the Society of Authors.

He joins Cambridge classics professor and non-fiction writer Mary Beard, award-winning crime writer Vaseem Khan, author, illustrator, newspaper cartoonist and graphic novelist Posy Simmonds, and 56 existing Fellows.

Philip said of the appointment:

The challenges facing authors are growing day by day. It’s so vital to have a powerful, fast-moving organisation that can help shape policy in the way that the Society of Authors does. I’m immensely proud, and deeply honoured, to have been elected a Fellow. The Society’s support for writers and illustrators is paramount in the fast-changing publishing landscape. It performs a huge amount of work at all levels, from the struggling individual writer, all the way to the top, and I’m thrilled to be able to continue to work with them.

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