Here's a bumper number of the newsletter, with added Ernaux and extra indie press news. Fill your boots!
Newsletter contents
1. Aid for Ukraine
2. This week’s online gathering
3. Indie press news
Bluemoose Books
CB editions
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Galley Beggar Press
Paper Visual Art
Tramp Press
Unbound
4. Irish Literary Society
5. Ethiopian fiction
6. Annie Ernaux - Nobel Laureate 2022
7. Alex Pheby on Malarkoi
8. Burgess klaxon!
9. Multiple Joyce review
10. Small Publishers fair 2022
11. Joyce Joyce Joyce
12. BBC National Short Story Award 2022
13. Next week's online gathering
14. Nudge
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1. Aid for Ukraine
The week will come when I don't have to kick off the newsletter with an appeal. This is not that week.
Please give what you can, when you can. The most far-reaching aid programme has been, and remains, the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal. You can donate quickly and easily here.
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2. This week’s online gathering
Our 40th Glue Factory online gathering features Keiron Pim on Endless Flight, his dazzling new biography of the troubled writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939);
Susanna Crossman will be reading from her acclaimed essay ‘The Utopian Machine’ and sharing her thoughts on growing up in a 1970s commune; we'll see part of a theatre piece about food banks; the author and BDSM model Ariel Anderssen will talk us through Liz Truss and her suggestive accessories; and we'll have a tribute to the photographer Mark Gerson who this week celebrated his 101st birthday.
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3. Indie press news
Bluemoose Books
GHOST SIGNS by Stu Hennigan has been shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Award (non-fiction category) The House of Moose is up against the big publishers, so, if you're minded to vote - VOTE INDY! VOTE HERE! nationalbooktokens.com/vote
CB Editions
Some good news from Charles Boyle:
Gert Hofmann’s Veilchenfeld, translated by Eric Mace-Tessler and published in 2020, had been puttering slowly along until late September, when in just two days it sold more copies out of the distributor’s warehouse (Central Books) than in the previous two years. The reason: a chance piece of product placement in Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, in which ‘Alissa made reverential references to Gert Hofmann’s novel, Veilchenfeld’. Thank you, Alissa. And Mr McEwan. (Gert Hofmann’s Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl is also available.)
And a reminder that the CB Editions Season Ticket – 12 books for £75, post-free – is still available from the website home page. This offer has been running since the start of the first lockdown and last week was the first since March 2020 that Charles didn’t post out Season Ticket books. There must be more people out there, surely? If reading 12 books sounds like a big ask (but some of them are very slim), how about a shared Ticket? Charles will be happy to post to different addresses.
Fitzcarraldo Editions
The French author Annie Ernaux was earlier this week awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.'
Congratulations to the heavy-hitting indie Fitzcarraldo, who now publish three living Nobel laureates! And congratulations to the translators, who deserve far more than a pat on the back!
Galley Beggar Press
All Glue Factory regulars will be aware of Toby Litt's extraordinary year-long project A Writers Diary in which he shares a daily diary with followers. These will be complied and published by Galley Beggar on 1st January 2023.
A Writer's Diary is a novel unlike any other. Based on Toby Litts’s successful Substack diary (which he has been updating every day this year since January) A Writer’s Diary has an entry for each day of a year. In these, Toby details his daily life, his thoughts on writing, the desk he is sitting at, the writers who have inspired him (including Virginia Woolf and her own Writer’s Diary.) It feels like a real record of a year in Toby’s life - but! This is also a carefully plotted and constructed novel encompassing several years of Toby’s real experiences, as well as flights of imagination and fiction. As the book progresses, we come to see that he is conveying far more than his day-to-day routine and reality. Incrementally, Toby helps us to understand the most important issues in his life, and in the experience of any human. It gives an intimate insight into Toby’s world, his creative process, and his family. It is a warm, compassionate, and generous assessment of what it means to be alive.
It’s a lovely book - and deeply moving. It’s going to be released on 1 January and each entry will correspond to the day of the year on which it’s set. Which is to say, you’ll be able to read Toby’s entry for Thursday 12 January on Thursday 12 January. It’s going to be a reading project like no other. It’s a brave and splendid thing.
Ordering now is a good idea. Because of the UK situation, GBP aren’t certain about how much we’ll have to charge for the book. But, for now, web orders will cost just £9.99 – they’ll also be signed and include a limited edition set of three bookmarks.)
Paper Visual Art
'well i just kind of like it' is a new anthology of writing and images about art in the home and the home as art, edited by @WednesdayErskin and is published next month
It has great contributors (including.... )and is available for pre-order here: papervisualart.com/shop/
Tramp Press
On 5 October the Goldsmiths Prize announced its 2022 shortlist – a collection of six innovative novels that tackle matters of life, death and political resistance and span Scotland, south London, Brazil and the Indian Ocean. The £10,000 award, now in its tenth year and run in association with the New Statesman, celebrates fiction by authors living in the UK and Ireland that 'breaks the mould and extends the possibilities of the novel form.'
Congratulations to all publishers and authors, and especially to Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founders of this brilliant Dublin indie, on the shortlisting of Seven Steeples by Sara Baume.
The author has been a regular guest on The Glue Factory (and its earlier iterations) and it's wonderful to see this, her fourth book (and third novel) getting the attention it deserves. if you haven't discovered this already you can buy direct from the publishers here.
Unbound
Are you a writer that:
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4. Irish Literary Society
The 2022/23 season started on 29th September (but was too late to include in the previous newsletter). Next up, at the Bloomsbury Hotel in Great Russell Street the poet James Conor Paterson will launch his debut collection Bandit Country, in conversation wit the writer Darran Anderson
Bandit Country, James Conor Patterson – 17 October
The Bloomsbury Hotel The Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell Street, LondonJoining us at the start of the ILS 2022-23 season are the poet James Conor Patterson and writer Darran Anderson to launch Patterson's book bandit country. bandit country is the much-anticipated debut collection from James Conor Patterson, who will be familiar to ILS regulars from our event last year launching his anthology of essays on the Irish border: The New ...
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5. Ethiopian fiction
Last Sunday's online gathering featured translator Bethlehem Attfield on The Lost Spell by Yismake Worku. It's published by Henningham Family Press and available to order
Bethlehem mentioned a number of books and writers during her brilliant summary of contemporary Ethiopian fiction and the long history of the country's literature. She has kindly provided the following list of essential texts for anyone interested in further reading:
Mulugeta Alebachew - Heaven Without Prickly Pears (Asymptote Journal and Hypocrite Readers Magazine)
List of Ethiopian books written in English
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
The Wife’s tale by Aida Edemariam
Addis Ababa Noire: an Anthology
Tower in the Sky by Hiwot Teffera
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengistu
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6. Annie Ernaux
Nobel Laureate in Literature 2022
Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man’s Place and A Woman’s Story, have become contemporary classics in France. The Years won the Prix Renaudot in France in 2008, the Premio Strega in Italy in 2016, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019. In 2017, Annie Ernaux was awarded the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her life’s work.
Fitzcarraldo Editions has published eight titles by Annie Ernaux in English to date:
— The Years, translated by Alison L. Strayer, a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman. The Years was shortlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize.
— Happening, translated by Tanya Leslie, the story, written forty years later, of an abortion Ernaux had aged 23.
— I Remain in Darkness, translated by Tanya Leslie, recounting her attempts to help her mother recover from Alzheimer’s disease.
— A Girl’s Story, translated by Alison L. Strayer, where Ernaux revisits the summer of 1958, spent working as a holiday camp instructor in Normandy, and recounts the first night she spent with a man.
— A Man’s Place, translated by Tanya Leslie, scrutinizing her father and the shame that haunted him throughout his life.
— Simple Passion, translated by Tanya Leslie, which plots the emotional and physical course of the two-year relationship recounted in her diary, Getting Lost.
— Exteriors, translated by Tanya Leslie, a collection of journal entries over the course of seven years, concentrating on the ephemeral encounters that take place just on the periphery of a person’s lived environment.
— Getting Lost, translated by Alison L. Strayer, the diary kept by Annie Ernaux during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, an attaché to the Soviet embassy in Paris.
The Annie Ernaux Essentials Collection, which includes A Girl’s Story, Happening, The Years, A Man’s Place, and Simple Passion is also available on our website.
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7. Alex Pheby on Malarkoi
The great Alex Pheby will be giving a talk on ‘how to write a fantasy trilogy’ and signing copies of Malarkoi (the sequel to Mordew) in Topping in Edinburgh on Sunday 16th October. Details here.
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8. Burgess klaxon!
Professor Andrew Biswell of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation sends news of two events coming up in Manchester this monThe 2022 Anthony Burgess Lecture will be given by Robert Crawford at the Burgess Foundation in Manchester on Weds 12 October at 6:30 PM. His subject will be T.S. Eliot and the art of literary biography. Tickets £8 (or £6 for concessions). Details and booking via the link below.
https://www.anthonyburgess.
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9. Multiple Joyce reviewed by Stewart Walton
My book of one hundred short essays considering James Joyce's cultural legacy continues to attract attention and here's a beautifully-written piece by Stewart Walton writing for the website Berfrois.
And the book, published in the United States by Sagging Meniscus Press, is again available to order in the UK
https://gazellebookservices.co.uk/products/9781952386329
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10. Small Publishers Fair 2022
A reminder!
The Small Publishers Fair returns to this much-loved venue later this month. Take cash, cards and a wheelbarrow.
Friday 28th - Saturday 29th October 2022 11am - 7pm Free admission to the Fair, readings and talks Friday and Saturday 11am to 7pm Includes entrance to Bibliopoe: an exhibition of books by Steven J Fowler Conway Hall Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL
Nearest tube: Holborn
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11. Joyce Joyce Joyce
To celebrate the publication centenary of James Joyce's Ulysses, the EUF in collaboration with CAU-Kiel are hosting 11 guest lectures as part of a series entitled "21st-Century Joyce: Ulysses 100 Years On."
Can Joyce be read today? How has his significance — i.e. literary, cultural, political, European, literary, editorial, national, international, modernist, ethical, controversial, canonical, experimental, transnational, etc. — changed from the 1920s to the 2020s? These are all questions that inform the talks. They will also consider Joyce’s cultural, literary, and national impact, through the lenses of decolonization, gender studies, narratology, intertextuality, literary theory, disability studies, geopolitics, new historicism, and cultural contextualization.
The objective of the series is to show that Joyce is as relevant today as he was in 1922 and to inspire non-specialist and specialist alike with an appreciation of Joyce’s work and Irish literature more generally. The centenary has prompted a massive surge in the field as well as deep considerations regarding Joyce’s relevance and impact 100 years on. Come join us and participate in this conversation!
These lectures are offered in hybrid form. You can join us in person or online (simultaneously). Please see below for the link and schedule.
All lectures delivered in English unless otherwise indicated.
Details for both lecture series and associated reading group here
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12. BBC National Short Story Award 2022
This years' winner is Saba Sams, for her short story 'Blue 4eva'.
She drafted the story when she was 19 while studying creative writing at the University of Manchester, returning to it when she came to write her forthcoming debut collection Send Nudes a few years later.
More details, and the full text of 'Blue 4eva' here
'Blue 4eva' is available to listen to on BBC Sounds, appears in the BBC National Short Story Award 2022 (Comma Press, £7.99) and in Saba Sams’ debut collection, Send Nudes (Bloomsbury, £14.99).
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13. Next week's online gathering
Join us on Sunday 16th October for a programme featuring the acclaimed Dominican poet Celia A Sorhaindo, who will be reading from and discussing her first collection Radical Normalisation.
Katy Derbyshire and Peter Freeth will introduce V & Q Books, with a fous on Identit by Mithu Sanyal and translator Alta L. Price. V&Q Books is the English-language imprint of one of Germany’s most exciting independent publishing houses, Voland & Quist.
S J Fowler on his new novel MUEUM (and see the note above on this year's Small
Publishers Fair)
Melissa McCarthy, our roving reporter, returns.
Bernadette Gorman on her extraordinary discovery that offers a new key to
unlocking Finnegans Wake
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14. Nudge
Many people in Britain are now having to choose between eating, heating, rent or mortgages. This callous government will disenfranchise benefit claimants to pay for tax rises for the rich.
These are dark days for us all, but many suffer more than otghers and The Trussell Trust does a lot of good by running food banks throughout the country. Please support them.
Here's what Tory MP Lee Anderson (below) has to say about food banks:
Every do-gooder is starting these little projects (foodbanks) to make themselves feel good.
What makes Lee feel good? Claiming £208,491 in expenses on top of his MPs salary for one thing, and being nasty about National Treasure Jack Monroe (aka The Bootstrap Cook) for another. What a nasty piece of work. What an exemplary Tory.
Imagine the moral and ethical depravity of anyone using 'do-gooder' as a disparaging term. Last year he notoriously claimed that anyone could afford to eat a good home-made meal for 30p. For this reason he has been nicknamed '30p Lee'. I can think of better names for this ambulant ballbag.
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