Every Sunday The Glue Factory will bring to your attention the kind of things you need to know.
I welcome suggestions from authors, indie publishers, press agents and creative practitioners of all kinds, in any medium, so please email me with anything you’d like to share with our readers in future issues.
And don’t forget that if you receive this newsletter you’ll also get an invitation to the live online gathering on Sundays at 7:30pm UK time. They are always free to join (but donations to The Trussell Trust or your local equivalent outside the UK are appreciated). Details of this week's gathering are in the newsletter.
Let me know if you’d rather not receive this regular update and I’ll happily stop bothering you.
In the light of what's going on right now Im reminded of Tony Benn's words:'The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.'
Let’s stick together.
David
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Newsletter contents
1 Aid for Ukraine
2 This week’s online gathering
3 Indie press news
Bearded Badger
Bluemoose
Charco Press
4 J O Morgan in London
5 For the last time, probably
6 Dr Clare Hutton on Bloomsday
7 The Life of Andy: a new short story by David Hayden
8 Why poetry matters
9 Next week's online gathering
10 Theatre review by David Henningham
11 House of Wynne
12 Nudge
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1. Aid for Ukraine
You’ll have many calls on your time and generosity when it comes to supporting the people of Ukraine and the ghastly term ‘compassion fatigue’ has been circulating. This weekly newsletter will continue to highlight some of the less visible initiatives but the most far-reaching programme is the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal. You can donate here.
2. This week’s online gathering
This week's online gathering (starting at 7:30pm) will feature author Stu Hennigan on GHOST SIGNS: Poverty and the Pandemic, a powerful and disturbing account of Leeds during the pandemic lockdown. He'll be joined by Bluemoose Books publisher Kevin Duffy.
The poet Caroline Clark will be in conversation about 'verbatim writing' with the Swedish author Marit Kapla.
And (in a newsworthy coup) top Irish novelists Nuala O’Connor and Rónán Hession will be exchanging thoughts on Joyce's legacy as we approach the centenary celebrations of Ulysses in Dublin on 16th June.
You'll get a Zoom link at 6:30pm UK time. Join us for 90 minutes of cultural diversion and enrichment.
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3. Indie Press news
Bearded Badger
Delighted to see the return of Bearded Badger the excellent Derbyshire-based indie run by Paul Handley, who this week announced three forthcoming titles:
The Art of Escapology by Nicola Ashbrook (published in late July)
The Cremation Project by Andrea Mason (September)
Kuper’s Tube by Drew Gummerson (November)
Bluemoose Books
Featured on this week's gathering, the first non-fiction title from the mighty House of Bluemoose is Ghost Signs by Stu Hennigan, launched on 23rd June at Leeds City Library
Ghost Signs is an eyewitness account of the author's experiences delivering essential food and medicine to some of Leeds' most vulnerable communities in the early stages of the pandemic during the first lockdown in 2020. It's a timely reminder of how life was for most of us during those unprecedented times, and paints a blistering portrait of the hardships being endured by deprived communities even before the current cost of living crisis hit. It's a visceral piece of reportage that is already drawing comparisons with George Orwell's classic work The Road To Wigan Pier, so this event is not to be missed. Stu will be in conversation with writer and academic Heidi James, discussing how the book came to be written, and to talk more about his experiences on the frontline as a keyworker in a city of 800,000 people at a time when the majority of the population was being forced to stay at home.
Charco Press
June is Pride Month, so to celebrate Charco Press have put together a bundle of books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters for just £32.
These four books explore a variety of queer experiences and identities in contemporary and historical Latin American settings. From a young woman’s sexual awakening in the 19th century Argentine pampas, to a trans sex-worker-turned-madonna sparking revolution in the slums of Buenos Aires; from a father and his gay son fighting to survive a hostile environment on the Colombian coast, to the repressed desires of rage-filled young men deep in the rural interior of Argentina: in these stories, queer love, joy and desire exist side by side with violence, homophobia and oppression.
The bundle contains:
Brickmakers by Selva Almada (tr. Annie McDermott), 2021
The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (tr. Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre), 2019
Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (tr. Frances Riddle), 2017
An Orphan World by Giuseppe Caputo (tr. Juana Adcock and Sophie Hughes), 2019
Order direct from the publishers here!
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4 J O Morgan in London
Join poet and novelist J.O. Morgan for a discussion about his Orwell Prize Political Fiction shortlisted novel Appliance (Jonathan Cape), a highly inventive and and humane novel about our relationship with technology and our addiction to innovation, with Orwell Prize judge Dennis Duncan.
J. O. Morgan's 2018 work Assurances, looking at the RAF's early involvement with maintaining the nuclear deterrent, won that year's Costa Poetry Award. He has been twice shortlisted for both the Forward and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Appliance is his second novel following Pupa, published by Henningham Family Press.
Dennis Duncan is a writer, translator and lecturer in English at University College London. His most recent book is Index, A History of the. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and the Literary Review. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives in London.
More details and tickets on the Orwell Festival website.
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5. Multiple Joyce launch events
You may want to skip this bit. Did I mention before that I've got a new book coming out this month?
Multiple Joyce: 100 short essays about James Joyce's cultural legacy is published by Sagging Meniscus Press and there are two events by way of launch:
Thursday June 16th Hodges & Figgis in Dublin. A Bloomsday gathering in Dublin's leading bookshop (which gets a name-check in Ulysses). I'm delighted that I'll be joined on the night by Nuala O'Connor (author of NORA, the brilliant novel selected as this year's One Dublin One Book campaign), with readings by Stephanie Elleyne and surprise guests. 6pm onwards. All welcome.
Monday June 27th Irish Literary Society, London. I'll be in conversation with Rónán Hession (who wrote the very generous foreword to my book, which just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished). Details and tickets here. Enter 'Buke' for a 50% discount - a night out in London's West End for a fiver! There will be live music, readings, signings and no end of craic.
Other dates and venues, if any, to be confirmed.
There will also be a modest online launch during our regular Sunday online gathering on 12th June.
And don't miss an exhibition of wonderful Philip Maltman paintings inspired by Joyce's writings at the 508 Gallery in King's Road, London (and Philip features prominently in Multiple Joyce, by the way)
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6. Dr Clare Hutton on Bloomsday
Clare, who appeared on our Ulysses centenary online gathering earlier this year with a brilliant presentation about the various women who made Joyce possible, will be giving a lecture on Bloomsday (10.30 pm UK time, available as livestream) for all of us who want to mark Bloomsday later in the evening, without sloping off to Nighttown.
From the Harry Ransome Center website:
Delve into the intellectual context surrounding the Harry Ransom Center’s centenary exhibition Women and the Making of Joyce’s Ulysses in this talk by curator Dr. Clare Hutton, Reader in English and Digital Humanities at Loughborough University. One hundred years after the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in Paris triumphed as both cause célèbre and succès de scandale, the field of Joycean literary criticism thrives. But the field of Joycean biography is in sore need of revision. This lecture probes the correlations between biography, feminism, and the act of interpretation. Ulysses encourages biographical readings, but Joyce tended to downplay the significant role which women played in enabling him to realize his ambition. Learn more about key objects in the exhibition as Hutton suggests some revisions to existing views of figures such as Harriet Shaw Weaver, Sylvia Beach, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, May Joyce, Josephine Murray, and Nora Barnacle.
Details and (free) tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/
The Centre Culturel Irlondaise in Paris marks the centenary of the publication of Ulysses on Saturday 18th June 'avec une projection de films, une conversation et un concert avec @KoltaiKatalin et
Details here:
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7. The Life of Andy
The White Review this week published a new short story by David Hayden. So here's a bonus for Sunday morning:
https://www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/the-life-of-andy/
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8. Why Poetry Matters
There are still a handful of tickets left for Aeon Magazine's upcoming Live Philosophy event - 'Why Poetry Matters' with Edith Mayhall and Tim Etchells.
It's on Monday 21st June. Details here.
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9. Next week's online gathering:
An eclectic line-up! The poet Philip Terry on The Lascaux Notebooks, an extraordinary new collection prompted by the cave paintings in The Dordogne; the author Elizabeth Chakrabarty’s Lessons in Love and Other Crimes and the translator Bryan Karetnyk on Deceit, a novel by Yuri Felsen ('the Russian Proust') Read about it here:
Deceit will be published on 22 June by Prototype. And we'll be joined by our roving reporter Melissa McCarthy. How's that for a Sunday night?
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10. Theatre review
Here's David Henningham's 3am Magazine review of the new production of Rainer, a play by Max Wilkinson which runs at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney until 18th June, and sounds like it's worth a look:
https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/rainer/#.YqC5PNwaeMc.twitter
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11. House of Wynne:
Frank Wynne has designed a range of stylish witty clobber and accessories that any translator (or reader of translations) will wear with pride - and 50% of profits will go to a translation organisation
https://www.terribleman.com/translator-t-shirts/#!/all
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12. Nudge
Another reminder: When you think of donating to a food bank, you may think of giving pasta, tinned food or cereal. Though this food is always appreciated, the food banks in the Trussell Truss network are also in need of some more unexpected, but essential, items.
Six things you can donate to a foodbank apart from food:
- 'free from' foods including gluten-free and dairy-free
- tin openers
- toiletries including toothpaste, soap and hand wash
- toilet rolls
- household items such as washing-up liquid and detergent
- nappies, baby wipes and other toiletries
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