The Glue Factory March newsletter
This monthly newsletter is to let you know about forthcoming events and/or publications involving writers and creative practitioners I admire, all (or most) of whom have taken part in our online gatherings over the last few years, and who will therefore be familiar to many of you. These are dark times, and getting darker. Let’s do all we can to keep the lights on.
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Current and forthcoming fiction:
I’ve just ordered the new book by Marjorie Ann Watts: Mrs Calder and the Hyena. Here’s what Will Eaves says on the publisher’s website: ‘
Mrs Calder is frail and distracted. She annoys her daughter by living in disorder, taking up with vagrants, hanging around churchyards and giving free rein to her imagination (she thinks about her doctor with no clothes on). But the real hindrances to right perception in this tale, and throughout Marjorie Ann Watts’s exhilarating second collection, produced at the tender age of ninety-eight, are not the fantasies by which we sustain ourselves but the suffocating illusions of others. Particularly those who want what’s best for us. Where is safe? Where can we start again? Whether in homes troubled by age and bereavement or foreign cities consumed by idealistic revolution, “there are no answers”, as Mrs Calder herself puts it, except to pick up these stories wherever we left off, and – gratefully – read on.’
Fom the author of Are they funny, or are they dead? (2010), which is also warmly recommended
The University of Bliss is the debut fiction of the poet Julian Stannard, a sharply satirical and hilarious campus novel published last month by Sagging Meniscus Press. Read Brian Martin’s review in The Spectator.
The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana is published by Peninsula Press on 10th April 2025; ‘a mesmerising and unsettling novel from a powerful new voice.’
A new novel by Kevin Davey will always be a literary highlight of any year. Toothpull of St Dunstan is the third part of a loose-knit trilogy set in Kent that follows Playing Possum and Radio Joan, and the central character is an 800-year-old Canterbury dentist. I read a draft some months ago and was stunned by the range, depth and originality of this radically adventurous fiction. Nobody else today is writing anything remotely like this, and if Kevin Davey has an equal in British fiction it’s William Golding. There will be an online gathering to launch the book, and plans are in hand for a real-life event in an appropriate venue. The publisher is Aaaargh! Books of Ipswich (but there’s currently nothing on their website about this).
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Do spend time with this online solo exhibition of paintings by the artist Madeleine Strindberg (link below).
The organisers say:
This work is a small sample of what Madeleine Strindberg has produced in the last ten years. She actually has a whole new body of work ready to show very soon, we resisted the temptation to show any of the most recent pieces from a recent Italian residency here, hopefully we can show it or at least see it physically in a gallery soon.
The size of the paintings or indeed the medium isn’t important here, we are looking at the work in digital form via a monitor that dictates the size of the image. Madeleine paints in acrylic, oil, with household gloss and more, her work is on large canvas, small canvas, paper, newspaper and more;
Here’s the link.
The organisers add:
Please do click on an image to enlarge it and see each image in full or to run the slide show and do please please please view it all on a decent-sized monitor, something more respectful than just a damn phone for gawdsake.
This is, by the way, a wonderful way to enjoy paintings without the distractions of other folk gassing away in the background. It strikes me that, Just as the National Theatre occasionally shares live productions online, galleries might share exhibitions with a wider audience online, with a camera roaming around on behalf of viewers at home. No commentary, not critical apparatus, just a camera navigating the space and pausing in front o each artwork…
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Courtesy of Madeleine Strindberg’s husband Charles Boyle, publisher of CB editions, here’s a link to the best indie publishing offer available in the UK. There are 79 books on the CB editions website, mainly fiction and poetry, and you can choose any 6 for just £50, or any 10 for £75. UK only; free postage.
(There are also specific special offers – 2 books for £16, 3 for £24, they change every month or so – at the foot of the Books page.) Beats Amazon. Free postage.
Read more on Charle’s excellent blog Sonofabook
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The non-fiction indie publisher Reaktion Books last month announced a new Book Club which offers:
- A choice of one free ebook each month
- 40% discount on all website orders, with free shipping within the UK and the US
- A monthly newsletter, featuring exclusive special offers
- Free proof copies on request
- Free Reaktion tote bag, bookmarks and other merchandise, where available
- A choice of any Reaktion paperback free on renewal of membership
For full details click here
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Forthcoming poetry
Alina Stefanescu’s My Heresies is published by Sarabande next month and available to pre-order If you can. If heresies and poems appeal to you. The cover is not for the faint-hearted!
More online at the author’s website.
Julian Stannard (him again) is really on a roll this year with a volume of New and Selected Poems from Salt Publishing. Read this terrific review here by Neil Fullwood, who praises ‘poetry that blends intellectual rigour, sterling craftsmanship and sly wit in a seemingly effortless manner.’
Available from the publisher here.
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GBP short story prize longlist
Galley Beggar Press of Norwich has just announced the shortlist for their 2024/25 Short Story Prize as the competition enters its tenth year.
Founded in 2015 as an additional way of supporting talented new writers, as well as demonstrating the wonderful things that can be done with the short story form – the 2024/25 longlist, in alphabetical order (by writer), is:
what Trevor saw, by Shastri Akella
Linha One, by Liz Churchill
Honey, by Toril Cooper
Counting Backwards, by Garrie Fletcher
Sound of the Shell, by Valentina Gindri
Drumcree Ballee, by Gerard McKeown
School Run, by Emer O'Hanlon
Mabbich, by C.D. Rose
Dangerous Materials, by Nicole Sellow
Axe Murderer, by Susannah Waters
All ten stories are available to read online, at www.galleybeggar.co.uk/prize.
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STOP PRESS!
Just as I was about to sign off this month’s newsletter, Galley Beggar announced the shortlist, so congratulations to Shastri Amelia, Nicole Sellow and Susannah Waters. The overall winner will feature in the April newsletter
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In case you missed it
To coincide with publication of her latest novel The City Changes Its Face, Eimear McBride wrote about Eimear McBride (and other things) for The Guardian. Very good, this.
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Randall takes America
Jonathan Gibbs’s wonderful debut novel Randall, or the Painted Grape has just been published as Randall in the United States from Tivoli Books
It originally appeared in the UK from Galley Beggar Press and was widely acclaimed ("Quite simply one of the shrewdest and most outrageous art-world novels in the English language”).
Jonathan is well known to audiences of A Leap in the Dark as the author of Spring Journal, a poetic response to the pandemic inspired by Louis Macneice’s Autumn Journal (1939). This was published by CB editions and is available here.
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Alex Pheby’s Waterblack
Waterblack by Alex Pheby was published by Galley Beggar Press on Thursday 6th of February. (And here he is signing a few copies just for larks). It’s the third part of an extraordinary trilogy, following on from Mordew and Malorkoi, and closer to Gormengahst than Lord of the Rings. While I’m not as a rule much inclined to fantasy as a genre I was completely won over by the first two vivid and intricate volumes, and by Pheby’s enormous skill as an author. He also wrote two of my favourite novels of recent years: Playthings (2015) and Lucia (2019). Find out more and read extracts from both, as well as Mordew, here. And for nostalgists, here’s something I wrote about Playthings for the Literary Review back in 2016.
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Murnane klaxon!
Having abandoned writing at the start of the 90s, Gerald Murnane returned in 2009 with the Australian publication of Barley Patch. In 2011 Dalkey Archive Press published an edition outside Australia, but that has long been out of print.
Now, thanks to indie publisher And Other Stories, the book is now available for readers in Europe, the UK and North America
More details and pre-order here,
An idiosyncratic journey into the mind of Murnane as a writer and a reader, Barley Patch seeks to answer the question, ‘must I write?’. Taking in the comic-strip Mandrake The Magician, Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar and Sidney Hobson Coutier’s The Glass Spear, this work of prose fiction, from a writer widely seen as a future winner of the Nobel, chronicles the images that have endured in the author’s mind. It’s a book that asks us to think about the acts of reading and of imagining.
Last year, the author joined Merve Emre for a livestreamed event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, a recording of which is now available to watch online.
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The Future of the Novel
We’re used to being told (usually by Will Self) that the novel is dead, dying, or endangered. Yet the form remains more popular than ever with readers. In The Future of the Novel, published by Melville House, author Simon Okotie presents a bold future for long-form fiction, and suggests its evolution is far from over. It was launched at the end of February and you can order a copy here.
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As mentioned in the previous newsletter, Lin Rose Clark’s biography of her remarkable grandfather Robert Hilliard will be published next month. Swift Blaze of Fire is subtitled Olympian, Cleric, Brigadista: the Enigma of Robert Hilliard.
Hilliard (1904-1937) was an Olympic boxer, Irish republican, Church of Ireland minister and communist. He was killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting in the International Brigades. What a life!
There will be a launch event at Books Upstairs in Dublin on Thursday 3rd April. All welcome
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Indie Booker shocker
The International Booker Prize longlist was announced last week and according to the Bookseller: 11 indie publishers are behind 12 of the titles (the most in International Booker Prize history)
And 8 of the 12 novels on the list are under 200 pages.
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Republic of Consciousness Prize
The shortlist for this year’s prize, which is aimed at small independent publishers, was announced at the end of February. The three judges (Alice Jolly, Houman Barekat and Jude Cook) narrowed down a strong longlist of ten to a very strong shortlist of five, as follows, in alphabetical order:
Bullaun Press for There’s A Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated by Karen Fleetwood & Laëtitia Saint- Loubert
CB Editions for Invisible Dogs by Charles Boyle
Divided Publishing for How to Leave the World by Marouane Bakhti, translated by Lara Vergnau
Les Fugitives for Célina by Catherine Axelrad, translated by Philip Terry
Peninsula Press for Mother Naked by Glen James Brown
Londoners! All the RoC shortlisted titles will be celebrated at the Library at Deptford Lounge on 13 March: full details here.
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Forthcoming essays
From Irish publisher gorse, a new collection of essays by Alan Cunningham, available to pre-order here.
Over the course of thirteen interconnected essays, in New Green Fool Alan Cunningham considers the potential for foolishness in setting one's identity – or identities – far too strongly in any direction.
In New Green Fool, Alan Cunningham reflects on the fragile truth of his countless identifications and denials, on the often excessively private nature of his positions and, finally, on the consequences of favouring private certainty over the more complicated, relational aspects of ourselves and our sense of being – and being in – a society. Initially blending quotations from poet Patrick Kavanagh’s work The Green Fool with lyrical reflections on Cunningham’s life, the collection eventually starts to draw on a wider range of sources as it progresses and becomes more chaotic and cannibalistic. The trope Irishness – the ‘Irish’ identity –that Kavanagh utilised in The Green Fool was later discarded by Kavanagh as a ‘pack of lies.’ Over the course of thirteen interconnected essays, Cunningham considers the potential for foolishness and self-delusion in setting one’s identity – or identities – far too strongly in any direction.
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On the genocide in Gaza
An urgent and highly anticipated new book from The Irish Pages Press: Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine by Avi Shlaim was named as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, it was launched at the end of February.
Shlaim, one of the world’s leading historians of the Middle East and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, has long been a crucial voice in re-examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His previous book, Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, was recently awarded the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2024. In this latest work, Shlaim delivers a piercing analysis of Israel’s long-standing policies towards Gaza, arguing that they amount to an unfolding genocide. With meticulous research and compelling prose, he offers a critical perspective on one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of our time.
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Treading the Bards
Still down under, theatre troupe Forced Entertainment will be taking their Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare to the Adelaide Festival (8th - 16th March) and will also present a selection of the plays as part of the Ten Days on the Island Festival in Tasmania (21st - 23rd March).
Complete Works explores the dynamic force of narrative in relation to Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, histories and late plays. Through a kind of lo-fi, home-made puppetry, the stories of the plays really do come to life in vivid miniature. Simple and idiosyncratic, absurd and strangely compelling these works present a unique and intimate theatrical experience.
Can’t make it to Adelaide? Watch all of the plays for free, on the Forced Ents website - both as theatrical recordings and as recreated in 2020 from the perfomers’ homes during the Covid lockdowns. There is also plenty of additional audio-visual resources that tell you more about the plays, the process and the performances themselves.
You can see the Complete Works - all of them - on the FE website here.
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Podcast Corner
The rumours were true: a new podcast was launched last month featuring Kevin Duffy (founder of Bluemoose books) and Kevin Boniface (author, artist, broadcaster, postman). It’s called ‘The Last King of Elmet’ and in the first episode the two Kevins shared thoughts about (big breath) The Thunderstorm Census Organisation, Concrete Quarterly, Burger King, Huddersfield Glove Watch, The George Baker Selection, Ramsey Lewis, Becoming a Goth, The Boyle Family, Georges Perec, Last of the Summer Wine and Jigsaw Factory Life. Listen here.
And here’s author Drew Gummerson on the excellent Northern Voices podcast, interviewed about his latest novel Saltburn. Listen here.
Author Heidi James has a brilliant podcast, now in its third season (and how did I miss the first two?) In this episode she talks to filmmaker and musician, Luke Seomore, about finding your own style as an artist, collaboration, falling in love with image and our mutual love for the Werner Herzog film, Stroszek. Listen here.
Finally Episode Two of the new TOLKA podcast is now available to stream, and it features a favourite Irish writer Tim MacGabhann, reading from his Issue Seven piece, ‘The Intransitive’, and discussing his insatiable reading habit, Victor Serge, and the golden age of ape cinema. Listen here.
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Did I mention that I, too, have a new book out in June?
A Crumpled Swan is a collection of fifty essays (all by me) prompted by a single short poem: ‘In the dream of the cold restaurant,’ by Abigail Parry. There will be launch events in Dublin (at Hodges Figgis on Thursday 12th June), in London (date and venue to be confirmed), and online (date to be confirmed). Extracts will appear in Exacting Clam, The London Magazine and elsewhere.
Details of the book are on my publisher’s website here.
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I wouldn’t be writing and circulating this newsletter if the British press did a better job of supporting and promoting independent publishers, new writers, off-trail performers and the kind of things I want to know about. I was struck. last night, by the range and quality of The Irish Times coverage of all that’s happening in Irish culture. See what you think here.
That’s all for now. If you’re still reading this, thank you.
Slava Ukraine
David
PS Authors and indie publishers - let me know if you have a book coming out or a project you’d like to promote and I’ll be happy to include details in future newsletters. These will be monthly, more or less, throughout the year, and I’d appreciate any notifications by the end of March.
And do let me know if you’d rather not be on the mailing list and I’ll happily stop badgering you. D.
