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RLF Fellows’ News: September 2024

Publishing

Anna Wilson’s new picture book Be Back Soon will be published in hardback by Anderson on 5th September.

Illustrated by Jenny Bloomfield, it tells the story of brothers Mo and Bibi, who live in South Africa.

When Bibi has to go away and Mo is worried, Bibi reassures him that he’ll be flying over the Earth, following the swallows’ migratory path.

The book is designed to teach small children about migration and how separation does not mean forgetting. Anna says: “It was inspired by my aunt who lived in Johannesburg and used to write to me in the UK, asking me to ‘look after the swallows until they return to us.'” 

John Greening’s new annotated selection of U.A. Fanthorpe’s poems Not My Best Side: Selected Poems, is set for publication this month.

U.A. Fanthorpe (1929-2009) abandoned a successful teaching career to focus on poetry, concealing her Oxford degree so she could find paid work at Hoover and as a hospital receptionist to study people, which is what her wonderful poems do best. She was the first woman to be nominated for the Oxford Professor of Poetry. 

The book also includes a preface by Oxford’s current Professor of Poetry, A.E. Stalling.

Journalist and science writer Marcus Chown’s new book A Crack In Everything – which tells the story of how black holes came in from the cold and took cosmic centre stage – has been published by Bloomsbury.

Marcus Chown interviewed many of the scientists who made these key discoveries, translating the most esoteric of science into everyday language.

Andrew Martin’s latest novel The Night in Venice, a psychological thriller set in 1911, has been published by Weidenfeld.

The book follows 14-year-old Monica, who has a wild imagination and an unbearably dull governess named Rose Driscoll, on a trip to Venice. On the very first morning of their visit, as the sunlight streams through the curtains of their Palazzo, Monica wakes up to a horrible realisation: has she killed her only guardian?

Rob Chapman’s recently published Unsung: Unsaid. Syd and Nick in Absentia is based around a series of fictional meetings between Syd Barrett and Nick Drake in 1974. 

Previously featured in Record Collector’s January 2024 issue, the book traces the movements of two “lost boys” of early 70s British pop through their last creative year.

Bernie McGill has recently had a new story published in The Irish Times, as part of their summer fiction series.

Set in Venice, ‘People In The Wind’ was written partly during her stay at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.

Events and Appearances

On Friday 6 September, Steph Morris and fellow Fair Acre poet Liz Lefroy will join Fred D’Aguiar at The Hive in Shrewsbury for a series of readings to launch Fred’s new pamphlet ‘Ghost Particles’, written to celebrate the life of his friend, Geoff Hardy.

Buy tickets here.

On Sunday 22 September, Elizabeth Cook will be featured at the Tears in the Fence poetry festival in Blandford Forum, Dorset, reading her work alongside Frances Presley and John Freeman. The festival is a celebration of 40 years of independent literary publishing and the community around the poetry journal and workshop.

For more information and to buy tickets, see the festival programme.

On Thursday 26 September, John Siddique will be discussing poetry as part of the Marlborough Literature Festival. He will be focusing on his books So: Selected Poems 2011–2021 and Signposts of the Spiritual Journey: A Practical Road Map to a Meaningful Life.

Tickets here.

On Saturday 28 September, Jill Dawson joins fellow author Rachel Hore in ‘From Fact to Fiction,’ a discussion hosted by D.J. Taylor about novels and short stories based in historical fact, which are embellished to create a new work of fiction.

The event is part of the King’s Lynn Literature Festival.

Also appearing at the King’s Lynn Literature Festival is John Greening, who will be launching his new edition of U.A. Fanthorpe’s poetry Not My Best Side: Selected Poems with a reading of selected U.A. Fanthorpe poems, along with some from his own collection The Interpretation of Owls on Sunday 29 September. More here.

On Sunday 30 September Nicola Baldwin will take part in a screening of her short drama film The Nervous State, as well as joining a panel discussion called ‘The Nervous State: The Internalisation of the International crisis, 1938’, hosted by Julie V. Gottlieb, with Matthew Stibbe, Maiken Umbach, Rachel Lightstone.

The event, which takes place at The Wiener Holocaust Library in Russell Square, London, will be chaired by Lucy Noakes of the Royal Historical Society. More here.

Awards

Plays and productions

Mirza Waheed’s first novel The Collaborator has been adapted into a film.

Set in the 1990s on the Line of Control that separates Indian Kashmir from Pakistani Kashmir, the young protagonist is forced by an Indian army captain to go into the valley that separates the two countries to count the army’s kills by collecting IDs of the dead, many of whom are missing teenage boys from his small village.

The novel was a 2011 book of the year in The Telegraph, New Statesman and Telegraph India, and a 2011 Guardian first book award finalist.

Jane Rogers has written Clear Light of Day, a two-part Sunday Drama for BBC R4, adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Anita Desai.

Set in Delhi, Clear Light of Day is the story of a Hindu family torn apart by tragedy when one of the siblings marries a Muslim. Desai explores the betrayal, grief, and slow path towards reconciliation, experienced by a nation and in microcosm by one family.

The drama will be broadcast on 18 and 25 August at 15:00, and available on BBC Sounds throughout September. More here.

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