Black Lives Matter: a Call for Poems and Microfiction

Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New Word (CivicLeicester, 2020) is now available*

CivicLeicester is inviting and accepting poems and short fiction on the theme, Black Lives Matter.

We welcome submissions exploring any of the images, issues, triggers, histories, lives, demands and outcomes that are being highlighted by Black Lives Matter and current and past protests.

We welcome submissions from writers of all ages, based anywhere in the world.

The video of George Floyd dying as a white policeman pressed his knee against Floyd's neck and kept it there even after Floyd had stopped speaking or moving has triggered weeks of mass protests around the world.

The protests are taking place in the midst of a global pandemic that is also disproportionately killing people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.

Around the world people are demanding justice.

"Black Lives Matter", "Hands up, don't shoot", "Am I a threat?", "I can't breathe", "White silence is violence", "No justice, no peace", "Is my son next?", "Get your knee off my neck" have become rallying calls against police brutality and against the killing of Black people by the police. They have become rallying calls against racism, racial profiling and racialised inequality, discrimination and oppression.

Please send the poems and short fiction to civicleicester@gmail.com by 2pm on Tuesday, 7 July 2020

Submission Guidelines

● Poems should be 40 lines or less, and short fiction, 100 words or less.
● The poems and short fiction should be on the theme, Black Lives Matter.
● Submissions must be in English. In the case of translated work, it is the translator’s responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder of the original work.
● If submitting a poem or short fiction which has been previously published, please give details of where it has appeared and confirm that you are the copyright holder.
● Ideally submissions will be typed single spaced and submitted either in the body of an email or as a .doc attachment.
● Please include a short biography of 50 words or less. This will be included in the anthology if your poem is accepted. If you do not send a biography, it will be assumed you do not wish your biography to appear in the anthology.
● You may submit a maximum of three poems or three pieces of short fiction or a combination of poems and short fiction. You do not have to submit all three at the same time, but the editors can only consider a maximum of three submissions.
● We welcome submissions from writers of all ages, based anywhere in the world.
● Please send the poems and short fiction to civicleicester@gmail.com by 2pm on Tuesday, 7 July 2020.

Notes:

1. Black Lives Matter poetry anthology fundraising page

2. Black Lives Matter, Wikipedia entry

3. CivicLeicester is an indy publisher that uses video, photography and the arts to highlight conversations
 
*Updated on 17 November 2020 to show that Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World (CivicLeicester, 2020) is now available.

Interview _ Marija Todorova

Marija Todorova has worked for international organizations that include the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Department for International Development (DFID), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include interpreters in mediation, intercultural education, and visual representation in translation.

Todorova is an Executive Council member of International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the Hong Kong Baptist University, and a PhD in Peace and Development Studies from University Ss. Cyril and Methodius Skopje.

In this interview, Maria Todorova talks about translation, peacebuilding and Journeys in Translation:

What would you say is the role of translation or translation studies in peacebuilding?

For me, language is maybe one of the most important aspects of both peacebuilding and development. In the current state of the world when we are witnessing increasing numbers of refugee crises around the globe, the need for language professionals who work alongside humanitarian personnel is greater than ever.

My interest in this topic started with my employment with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) during the Kosovo conflict in 1999 and the ensuing refugee crisis in Macedonia in 2001 as well as the repatriation process in Kosovo. I was interpreting for the refugees at the Macedonia-Kosovo border as well as in various refugee camps throughout Macedonia, and for the internally displaced people and minorities in Kosovo. This was a truly life-changing experience for me.

I have done a lot of research to explore some of the aspects that make interpreting in conflict different and specific.

My personal experience provides me with a lot of insight, and I also conducted interviews with people who were working as interpreters in both the Kosovo refugee crises and the European refugee crises. Although employed primarily for their linguistic skills, field staff working in situations of emergency often decide to adopt a role similar to that of a mediator, and giving voice to the vulnerable. In doing this they undertake tasks beyond the scope of the work of a language broker and more of a peacebuilder.

Can you tell us more about the book chapter, "Interpreting conflict: Memories of an interpreter"?

Interpreters have been traditionally seen as invisible. Even when their presence is mentioned by historians, interpreters working in conflict zones are rarely referred to by name or given space to share their stories and comment. However, if we listen to their accounts we may be able to learn a lot about how they feel and how they perform their tasks.

The chapter you mention was published in Transfiction: Research into the realities of translation fiction (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014), edited by Klaus Kaindl, Karlheinz Spitzl. The chapter makes an attempt to make some sense of the life of a Serbian interpreter in a Kosovo US Army base by examining the main character of Tanja Jankovic’s semi-autobiographical work of fiction, The Girl from Bondsteel. The novel is an account of how an interpreter copes with the difficult situation of being “in between”. This ‘in-betweenness’, however, does not mean being in a place which is neutral or objective, in between cultures. For Diana, the main character in the novel, this means constantly making decisions and taking sides based on her own ideologies and loyalties which are connected with specific cultural spaces, and not with the ‘in-between’.

And, with Zoran Poposki, you co-authored "Public memory in post-conflict Skopje: Civic art as resistance to narratives of ethnicity and disintegration". Can you tell us more about that chapter as well?

The violent conflicts in the countries emerging out of former Yugoslavia may be a thing of the past but the ethnic and nationalistic tensions underlying them remain part of the daily life in the new independent states. This article looks at how art in public space is used to promote or resist the legacy and ideology of ethnic division, disintegration and conflict.

The article, in Post-Conflict Performance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), edited by Des O'Rawe and Mark Phelan, explores tactics of creative resistance to the official public narrative of ethnicity, history and disintegration, focusing on the work of a few Macedonian new media artists who seek to resist the government-led transformation of Skopje’s public space into a place of division and spectacular power. One of these artists, Zoran Poposki has produced several projects focusing his art on transforming the public space from a place of exclusion into a place of inclusion and representation of the multifaceted nature of Skopje’s citizens.

In the article, we also focus on the difference between public art proper (artworks in public space commissioned by governmental or corporate entities that ultimately reproduce existing mechanisms and relations of power as well as a culture that glorifies violence); and civic art (artworks in the public sphere, largely immaterial in form and created through broad participatory processes that are representative of various counter-publics and help create a culture of peace).

You are also the author of "Hong Kong Diversity in Anglophone Children’s Fiction". Tell us more.

A few years ago, my family and I moved to Hong Kong. Moving to a new country for us meant being able to learn a new culture, experience it in our own unique way, and adding that layer to our existing (multi)cultural experiences.

It also meant implanting a bit of ourselves in the diverse and cosmopolitan culture of Hong Kong.

We do this by embracing the local literary and art scene. Hong Kong offers a unique possibility to do this due to its production of local books in the English language.

I was particularly drawn to children’s literature because of its potential to transform and change deeply rooted stereotypes.

My study, "Hong Kong Diversity in Anglophone Children’s Fiction" (in Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong: Angles on a Coherent Imaginary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), edited by Jason S. Polley, Vinton W.K. Poon and Lian-Hee Wee), approaches fiction books for children as framing and representation sites that contest or promote stereotypes. Books should assist children in building their identities and thus encourage children to accept differences and reject discrimination. They should serve to open young readers’ horizons to other cultures and ways of life, thereby helping them to overcome fears that stem from ignorance.

The written word has a great potential to convey to children information about social diversity. One of the goals of effective use of children’s literature is to familiarize and celebrate cultural difference, to develop interaction, experience, understanding, and respect for people from different cultures. Both Anglophone children’s books and the Anglophone authors from Hong Kong speak to the diversity in Hong Kong, but migrant and ethnic minority experiences are still less likely to become the center of Anglophone children books published and distributed in Hong Kong.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

Translation is not only my profession; it is something I take great pleasure in. In addition to my work as an award-winning professional translator of numerous literary works primarily catering to a particular market, serving as a volunteer translator gives me the opportunity to participate in the socio-cultural processes by promoting the voices of the marginalized periphery.

For several years, I have served as a volunteer translator for the International Children’s Digital Library, translating children’s picture books in Macedonian. It all started with the translation of the picture book, Ciconia, Ciconia by the Croatian author, Andrea Petrlik Huseinović, about a white stork who is forced to leave its home destroyed by war.

In Hong Kong, I have served as a co-translator for the Hong Kong Poetry Festival, introducing Macedonian, Bosnian and Serbian poetry to Hong Kong readers. On the other hand, literature produced in and about Hong Kong is often overlooked by foreign translators and critics, rarely getting the attention it deserves as part of the world literary scene. Thus, my translation students at the Hong Kong Baptist University and I curated a website that introduces new contemporary prose and poetry from Hong Kong authors to English readers.

Hong Kong is also home of a significant migrant and refugee community. Recently, I was invited as guest speaker at a literary sharing on the issue of belonging and hospitality. Here I shared some of the poetry from Journey in Translation and the poems were received with great interest.

Marija Todorova's translation, into Macedonian, of Emma Lee’s “Stories from 'The Jungle'”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.85. 

Which were the most challenging aspects of the work you put into the initiative?

Translating poetry is not an easy task. Poetry contains a multi-layered and complex language, condensed with images and feelings, very different from any other literary genre. Translating poetry means that one has to interpret all the potential meanings embedded in these features. For some poems this meant retaining the poetic form as well. Whether or not this is at all possible when translating poetry from one language to another is a big question. Finding the right words to make the same impact in a new language can be very challenging.

Which were the most enjoyable aspects of the work?

Translating poetry is a very rewarding task. By translating the poetry in the Journeys in Translation project into Macedonian language I hope to contribute to the internationalization of the narratives of refugees and their plight. With this translation I hope to confront and change the misperceptions and stereotypes of the ‘other’ as enemy, along with providing positive models for acceptance and integration. This acceptance of cultural diversity as a positive thing and not as an obstacle helps promote models of coexistence and the expansion of identity.

As Macedonia has been affected by several refugee crises over the years, these poems will find resonance with the readers affected by the cultural conflict still present in the country.

Translating into Macedonian does not only represent sharing different voices and perspectives with the Macedonian readers. For me, it also means preserving the Macedonian language.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

Culture has been seen as an integral part of conflict, being both the cause of and channel for direct violence and its justification, as art can also be used to perpetuate cultural violence. Johan Galtung defines ‘cultural violence’ as referring to aspects of culture such as religion, language, art, empirical science and formal science, all of which justify direct and structural violence.

Art has an important role to play in the symbolic continuation or challenging of that culture of violence. Art, in all forms, is used as resistance to narratives of hate. The artist is a citizen, too, who reacts to social problems in the city just like everyone else.

By being an oppositional aesthetic practice, art of the activist or socially engaged type can offer powerful resistance to the state’s power structures, becoming civic art, the type of ‘art that promotes and creates civic values, invites and fosters citizen participation in public affairs’, all of which are essential to the functioning of democracy as a discursive space. In this process, culture is perceived as vital to social transformation, conflict mediation and resolution.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise through blogs, letters, emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. 

Over Land, Over Sea was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Superheroes of Leicester

River Monster of Leicester

Superheroes of Leicester encourages people to imagine Leicester as home to a cast of superheroes.

Cities around the world that are similarly home to superheroes include Lagos, which is home to crimefighter, Abolaji Coker; Tokyo, Japan, which is home to the Super Young Team and Big Science Action; and, Boston, Massachusetts, which is the former home base of Wonder Woman, and the occasional residence of Aquaman and his wife Mera. (Massachusetts is also interesting because there's a place called Leicester in Massachusetts as well.)

Leicester, England where the Superheroes of Leicester will be from currently has two known monsters: the Dragon of Habitat Loss, which we first heard about at the St George's Festival Fringe that was held in the city in April 2018, and the River Monster which was discovered in the city in August 2018.

Superheroes of Leicester, the project will facilitate or bring out a graphic novel or comic book or series of such books imagining Leicester as a City of Superheroes.

If the project leads to books, the first books in the series could be published in 2019/20 by CivicLeicester, who have just given us Leicester 2084 AD: New poems about the city, a poetry anthology that encourages people to imagine what the city will be like in the year 2084, how it will get there and what it will mean to its citizens, residents and the rest of the world.

Expressions of interest in Superheroes of Leicester can be emailed to CivicLeicester@gmail.com

Notes:

i. Spotted on 25 August 2018, in Abbey Park, the River Monster is made from plastic waste dumped in the River Soar.
ii. For ideas on how to protect the environment, like and follow Leicester Friends of the Earth and the Canal & River Trust.
iii. See also: Red Leicester Choir's "Pointless Packaging".

Interview _ Grant Denkinson

Grant Denkinson is an Open Access and Research Data Advisor at the University of Leicester's David Wilson Library. He is also a qualified psychotherapist and is one of the contributors to Purple Prose (Thorntree Press LLC, 2016), a new book about bisexuality in Britain.

In this interview, Denkinson talks about writing, sexuality and Purple Prose:

How would you describe Purple Prose?

Purple Prose presents different forms of writing about various aspects of being bisexual, such as being a bi person of faith and so on. Each chapter curates a number of personal experiences, collected thoughts and even tentative advice, together with quotes, cartoons and poems.

The chapter I co-curated with Juliet Kemp covers bisexuality and non-monogamy. The bi community I've been part of has been talking about how you can be bi and happily monogamous, non-monogamous in various ways, or not in relationships at all. Relationships of all kinds we could think of are spoken about in Purple Prose.

We make no argument for one shape of relationship being better than another, just that different ways to love and relate might work better for different people.

How did the book come about?

Kate Harrad decided a book about bisexuality in UK should exist and then made it happen and edited contributions from the UK bisexual community into Purple Prose.

While there has been an active bi movement in UK for many decades, there has not been a UK book by and about bisexuals since Sue George's Women and Bisexuality from 1993.

There have been some excellent academic works and some books from US. However, the UK is a significantly different context and we wanted something for everyone that speaks to personal experience rather than as part of the academic debates.

What are some of the other ways in which Purple Prose is significant?

I'd like this book to be part of making the whole world a better place since bi people are everywhere. We'll only be a small part, but we can play a part.

More specifically, there are a lot of people who, over their lives, have loved, fancied or had some form of sex with several people where those people were not all of the same gender. Many people in UK have had such thoughts or experiences. It seems important to me that there is at least one book out there that says people in this situation are not alone, which acts like a conversational prompt, which mentions aspects of the joys or stresses that they might have, and which comes from a place similar to home rather than from thousands of miles away.

I've met few bisexual people compared to how many there probably are.

Purple Prose is significant because a book can be a private experience. You don't need to be out to anyone to read a book. Books are portable and can be sent and read anywhere. Books last and are preserved in libraries and on bookshelves and can be quoted from and loaned to friends.

Also, many people know others who may be bi and who perhaps they want to understand better without needing to ask intrusive questions or treating one person's experiences as the same as many people's experiences. To gain this understanding, they can read autobiographical journals on-line and articles and news. They can listen to partners, friends and acquaintances. They can pick out films or listen to interviews on the radio or find a podcast. All these things are important but none of them offer the experience that comes from a good book on the subject.

How long did it take to the book together?

The process from conception to launch was a couple of years. Many of the writers met at events and we mainly collaborated online.

A number of UK publishers considered bisexuality too niche a subject despite recent surveys which show that around half of young people do not identify as gay or straight.

It was important to us to have the book properly produced to high quality while keeping the price aimed for the mass market. We therefore crowdfunded to cover the costs of producing the first print run of Purple Prose with Thorntree Press, a small publisher in U.S., who took the chance to expand from their speciality of books about non-monogamy.

Crowdfunding also showed us that there was a reasonably broad interest in the book.

It is wonderful to see the final version, a tangible thing that didn't exist before and can now be out there in the world to fare as it may.

I think we have a good book ... a book that is part of efforts to raise awareness around the complexity and diversity of human sexuality and which lets many voices shine and which does not reduce people to soundbites and simplistic characters.

Purple Prose (Thorntree Press LLC, 2016) was written for and by bisexuals in the UK.

Described as, "the first of its kind", Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain features interviews, essays, poems and commentary on topics that include definitions of bisexuality, intersections of bisexuality with other identities, stereotypes and biphobia, being bisexual at work, teenage bisexuality, bisexuality through the years, the media's approach to bisexual celebrities, and fictional bisexual characters. 

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into the book?

The bi community I know has been good at accepting and talking about various aspects of complicated, diverse and sometimes fluid human sexuality including how gender or disability intersect with lives, what options for relationship shapes we might consider, and the emotional and physical feelings related to various bodily practices related to BDSM.

We are also catching up on dealing with other parts of bi lives that include race, ethnicity and class.

Making sure we adequately gave voice to those we don't hear from enough because of racism and the like was a challenge. We never wanted to be tokenistic.

Word-of-mouth and the friend-to-friend networks we enjoy can lead us to mainly speak to people like we are personally, in similar positions in society. We wanted a broader approach.

Also, we're all pretty much volunteers on this. We have the whole rest of our lives to live and some of our community are constantly or often having to struggle more in life because of how they are disabled or because they are dealing with the consequences of prejudice.

What are some of the things from your personal experience that influence your writing?

I've been out as bisexual for about half my life and feel most at home as part of the UK and international bi communities. There I feel I can just be myself rather than feel the need to downplay any part of myself or need to keep explaining the basics of my attraction to some people who don't all share the same gender. I've tended to a high level of frustrated energy towards social progress and this has led to me community organising and volunteering often around sex, sexuality and relationships.

I was born in Nottingham in 1971 and have moved around England with work or study as well was living as a kid in Los Angeles because my parents wanted to try the place out.

I've lived in Leicester about a dozen years and love the mix of people and how much of a beacon we can be to show how positive multicultural living can be. I like how much is going on within 15 minutes bicycle ride from my house and that I will meet good people and friends at pretty much anything I go to.

I have never worked out what I want to do when I grow up. I'm into science and techie things and work these days for University of Leicester in the David Wilson Library promoting and supporting open scholarship. I'm also a qualified psychotherapist and support students at De Montfort University and in private practice.

What are your main concerns as a writer? And, how do you deal with these concerns?

In the back of my mind I'm aware of some of the violent backlash or relationship damage that can follow being out and out so publicly. However, I'm in a privileged position with good people around me and I hope any negative reaction I do get will be a sign of possible change and progress and will help others in the future.

I don't think of myself as a writer but cannot deny that I write. There are better crafters of words, better thinkers, people with more experience and knowledge and many other more marginalised voices trying to be heard.

I can amplify and signpost to other writers. I can encourage others to express themselves as they wish and try to lower barriers. I can keep expressing myself despite my inner critics so others may be emboldened to do the same.

If I write and others are inspired to write something better then I have helped offer a step and a goad. Perhaps some people will read and have happier lives or help others to do so. If the only response someone has is critical, that is OK, too ... It shows they are thinking around the the subject.

When did you start writing?

I mainly wrote for myself rather than for others until there were things I wanted to say to a geographically distributed community.

There used to be a magazine in the UK bi community called BiFrost which stopped publication in 1995, just when I was meeting the annual national get-together for bisexuals, friends and allies called BiCon.

Many people wanted a newsletter so Bi Community News was formed and I edited it for a while and still write there.

I've also contributed as a chapter writer or interviewee to a few books and pieces of research work. I wrote a chapter, "SM and Sexual Freedom: A Life History", as an activist, for Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives in Sadomasochism by Darren Langdridge and Meg Barker published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007.

I am currently sharing the findings of a project I conducted recently which collates experiences of bisexual people using emotional support or mental health services and which I hope will lead to better training and professional practice.

And although I am not committing to writing more for books right now, I note that there hasn't been a recent UK book on non-monogamies. I also write snippets and scene settings for fiction as my brain keeps coming up with such narratives and I wonder what would happen if I put them down together on some pages.

Do you write everyday?

I tend to write in bursts of enthusiasm.

I'd like to be better at getting into a writing mood quickly and getting some words down in pockets of dead time throughout the day and be more tolerant of interruptions.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most?

Writing about sexuality I have much appreciated a number of writers of more ephemeral forms on-line and in zines over the years as well as books such as Pat Califia's Speaking Sex to Power, John Preston's My Life as a Pornographer and Carol Queen's Real Life Nude Girl. These take an unapologetic, brave and clear look at how things could and should be in a better world.

I've also loved bits of recent history including No Bath But Plenty of Bubbles by Lisa Power from the oral history of the Gay Liberation Front; veteran of the campaign for homosexual equality, the late Antony Grey's writings; and Pressing Matters by Christine Burns about the successful Press for Change work around transgender issues.

I can mention books around bisexuality but there are rather a lot of them and an annotated bibliography might be more appropriate!

I feel lucky to have met a number of contemporary bi writers as well as having read their words.

I tend to read speculative fiction, occasionally utopian writers like Iain M. Banks or Ursula K. LeGuin, and dystopian, urban / technical, universe building authors.

I value books above other media and so approach writing for one with care.

Much of my thinking comes from both my own life and the many bi lives I have intersected with. I take the anger, the fear and the hope and joy and try to approach them all as true parts of our stories.
I have felt very open and am operating from a reasonably integrated "me" and am closely connected and moved by some wonderful people when writing.

I am also aware of writing with some horrible experiences in mind because they should not have happened or because people can do better.

And I have spoken to enough people in comic shops and bars to remember that concepts that might have been polished or kicked around in niche communities probably make no sense to the rest of the world ... because of that, I try to be as clear as possible when I write or speak.

[Interview_2] C. Y. Gopinath

C. Y. Gopinath has worked as a journalist, a film director, and a community development worker.

His books include Travels with the Fish (Harper Collins, 1999) and the novel, Book of Answers.

In this email interview, C. Y. Gopinath talks about his new book, Hoyt’s War.

What is your latest book about?

I just finished writing Hoyt’s War. The story is set in USA 2020, after four years of a very Trump-like President called Barry Codbag have made America the most ridiculed and reviled nation on the planet. It’s strange that my main ‘villain’ was every bit as irrational, maverick, and a dangerous loose cannon as Donald Trump.

Campaigning now for four more years in the Oval Office, Codbag needs new and more diabolical distractions to confuse the electorate.

Along comes an ordinary retiring American, Daniel Hoyt, a man who just would rather be left alone in peace. Hoyt knows he’s in trouble when he inherits an ancient but locked book said to contain answers to all of America’s problems.

And Codbag wants it. He knows this book will help him get re-elected.

Hoyt, wanting no part of this, sells the book to a dollar store. But the shop owner quickly realizes what the book could mean, and re-invents himself as a clergyman, claiming that through this book God speaks straight to him. It’s a matter of time before he is working directly with the President.

The President and the pastor make a lethal pair. For every preposterous law Codbag wants to enact, the pastor makes up ‘divine’ evidence that it comes from God’s words in the book. And a gullible nation laps it up.

Codbag wants to turn America into a monarchy with himself as King, in the name of minimum government.

Decriminalize rape.

Legalize cheating in examinations.

Impose a tax on sex.

Create a special Grey Area for people who think too clearly.

Ban the past and future tense.

Now Daniel Hoyt hates a fight; he’s no hero. But against his wishes, he gets dragged closer and closer to a confrontation with Codbag. The government wants the key to the book, and only Hoyt can get it. Suddenly he is the White House’s crosshairs.

Hoyt’s War is the story of an ordinary American who reluctantly takes on the most powerful man on the planet, in a hard-hitting, riotous and all too plausible satire of a dystopian America.

Is it true that Donald Trump was the inspiration for the character of President Barry Codbag?

Codbag undeniably talks, thinks and feels like Trump. But the truth is that I began writing this book in 2012 and finished it in early 2015, long before Trump was even a feature on the election map. So it’s a moot point whether Trump inspired Codbag — or whether Trump could pick up a few more crazy ideas from him.

The rather audacious promotional campaign I am launching actually is based on a series of ‘news stories’ from a certain fictional newspaper called Washington Psst, in which Trump is seen waving a copy of Hoyt’s War and saying it should be banned. It feels completely appropriate to take full advantage of someone as amoral, unethical, unprincipled and self-serving as Trump.

What sets the book apart from other things you've written?

Imagine a story set in the culture and society of one country — being re-written and re-imagined in the socio-political setting of a completely different country. I would go out on a limb and say Hoyt’s War might be the first book in literary history to do that.

In 2011, HarperCollins India published my first novel, The Book of Answers, a sharp political satire along Orwellian lines, set in India. The novel got shortlisted for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize, though its sales in India were in the hundreds. My literary agent at that time, Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Limited, mentioned once that the Indian cultural setting made the story harder to sell in the US.

This troubled me — the story was quintessentially about the madness of the extreme right ideologies that are dragging the world towards chaos. India and America had comparable madness. In 2013 I decided to completely re-write the story as an American political thriller. Patros Patranobis, the reluctant protagonist, became Daniel Hoyt. Prime Minister Ishwar Prasad, heading a parliamentary democracy, became Barry Codbag, leading a federal union called the United States of America.

Mumbai became the Tribeca district of New York. The royal palaces of Kerala morphed into the cotton plantations of Shongaloo, Louisiana, and Kerala itself became the Everglades. Miami and the circus town of Gibsonton.

The story could not stay the same either, I soon discovered. America was heading into its own elections, and the extreme right white-supremacist Christian evangelical environment needed serious tweaks in the story itself. Most importantly, I had to master the different dialects and idioms of the parts of America that featured in my story.

Best of all, a certain Mr Donald Trump landed with a crash-boom-bang on the election scene, bringing his own blustering, aggressive brand of unreasonable madness with him — and suddenly my President Codbag began to feel like the right villain at the right time. Codbag was already Trump, no two ways about it.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult?

Writing intimately about neighborhoods and cities that I had neither seen nor lived in was one of the challenges in writing Hoyt’s War.

The Book of Answers dealt with my country, India, and descriptions were textured and detailed because I had experienced them. To get the same level of familiar detail about American settings, I spent weeks and weeks in Google Street View. It is astonishing how much of the world you can now see in continuous street-level view thanks to Google’s mapping software. Once I had a sense of what a street or neighborhood looked like, my imagination added texture and other details.

I have now walked the streets of Tribeca, down to the metro stations; the sea fronting villas of Little Neck Bay, and where East River widens to become Long Island Sound; I have trolled the evening streets of Miami looking for a bar; and sweated in the humid marshes of the Everglades. Dr Basin’s clinic in New York is authentically sited near a waterfront that bustles with streetwalking sex workers in the evening.

I also had to research local government institutions, hierarchies, ranks, so that my details about police, precincts, and officialdom rang true.

What did you enjoy most?

I most enjoyed tweaking the story politically to align it better to the frightening lunacy of modern-day Trumpian politics in the USA.

India and the USA share frightening similarities in their right wing establishments, but in the USA at the moment, a particularly virulent form is in full expression.

For example, in the years since I began work on Hoyt’s War, rape has been a major issue in India — and the whole world saw how easily the Indian male patriarchy condoned and excused it. But curiously, the US extreme right does not view women’s bodies all that differently from an orthodox Hindu fundamentalist. I have heard ignorant Republicans speaking of how the woman’s body “shuts down” pregnancy after a rape; and the number of insane and nearly barbaric laws to pressure women away from choosing abortion.

In Hoyt’s War, I decided to go out on a limb and have the President decriminalize rape in the USA, partly to protect himself when his connection to a real-life rape in the Oval Office surfaces. Of course, he does this in a very Trump-like way, by referring to some spurious ‘evidence’ that rape makes women stronger in spirit, and better managers of men.

This is probably the most controversial part of the story. A reading club in New York with whom I had a Skype meeting went literally speechless when they heard this detail of the plot. You just don't satirize rape, it’s too serious, they said. Yet the reality of how men discuss women’s bodies in America and India and pass legislation to control it — is shocking, preposterous — and far worse that any satire I could conjure up. I can easily hear Trump say that there’s nothing wrong with rape, that it’s one of life’s trials that makes a woman stronger. I can see him producing some victim of rape at a town hall and saying, Isn't she fantastic? Can you even tell she was once raped?

Another pleasurable part of the writing was the stylistics. When I was young, one of my pleasures used to be in trying to imitate the writing styles of authors I loved — P G Wodehouse; Vladimir Nabokov; Gerald Durrell; Adam Hall. It’s a kind of literary muscle-flexing that actually builds skill.

In transposing Hoyt’s War to the USA, I had to change the way I used English. My voice, which had been the sometimes stiff English of a literate Indian, had to became the easy, slangy and colorful English of the American continent. Except that not all Americans speak and use English the same way. A black American from New Orleans would speak it differently from a Puerto Rican in New York.

One of the joys of writing Hoyt’s War was getting the voice right. I learned a lot, I crafted a lot, and I edited a lot. The narrative, in becoming American, also became tighter.

How did you choose a publisher for the book?

The novel has been published by Amazon’s CreateSpace. I have been doing all the things writers are supposed to do these days — send queries to agents, wait for weeks and weeks and weeks, try not to be too depressed by the inevitable ‘compassionate’ rejection letter. But the days of being at a publisher’s mercy are over. Amazon is actually an empowering option. I know I have a great and timely story, and I see no reason to wait and wait till the American elections are over. So, yes, Hoyt’s War has been available through Amazon since mid- April 2016.

Why Amazon CreateSpace? What advantages and disadvantages has this presented?

In the past, I have been wary of Amazon. I released The Book of Answers on Smashwords and on the Apple Bookstore as an e-book, since HarperCollins only had publishing rights for India. I was put off by Amazon’s requirement that anyone publishing with them had to forgo all other channels. That makes them a monopoly — and I instinctively rebel against those. But the traditional publishing route is slow, completely depressing, and based on randomness and lucky strikes. I am still looking for a publisher, but my story is linked to a fast changing political reality and I want to be out there right now. So I am on Amazon — and I’m seeing that it is a huge and viable option — and could actually play a role in helping me get noticed by a publisher.

What will your next book be about?

I have two books in progress right, one non-fiction, called Letters to a son @ McGill, and one fiction, titled Balman the Matruist.

Letters started as something I wrote to my son who started undergraduate studies in McGill University in August last year, traveling from Bangkok (where we live as expatriate Indians) to Montréal, two oceans away. With his consent, I posted a few of the letters on medium.com, and later on the International McGill Parents Facebook Page.

The response was emotional and heartfelt — and the idea for a book of such letters, called Letters to a son @ McGill grew out of that. One post, on loneliness on the campus, quickly went viral, garnering 22K views. I reposted on the McGill parents Facebook page, and began receiving replies from parents as far afield as California and India. Comments included —

Thank you for sharing your Letters to a son at McGill. They each touch me in a deep and spiritual way. Please continue to be as generous in sharing your (and your son's) experiences. (Fred Cohen)

Thank you. It brought tears to my eyes. (Andree Vezina)

Thank you! This is SO timely given all that is going on in the world, and certainly recently in Quebec and across Canada. Our daughter carries a Canadian passport but has only lived in Canada since beginning her studies at McGill- your writing is touching and relevant to all of us - thank you! (Michelle Rath)

I began working on the book in earnest when I realized that there are so many conversations waiting to happen between fathers my age and their millennial sons and daughters. These kids will live their lives in a world engulfed by crisis. Old rules will not apply. Snowballing technology change, violent politics, climate change, natural disasters and wars will define their world. What can I tell my children to prepare them for this world?

I coined the word maltruist for my next novel, Balman the Maltruist, to signify ‘great harm caused by someone trying to do great good’. The story is set among the Luo tribe of Kenya — where Obama’s father came from, incidentally — and tells of the interaction between an American missionary with dollars, and the Luos of Western Province, and the crafty, charming and amoral Indian who plays the intermediary between the two, translating each for the other, and inserting his own conservative Hindu values and hang-ups into the translation.

The story is written in two voices, the Indian’s, and in every alternate chapter, a young Luo man called King. Through these two we see a culture through two very different eyes. To understand them and their daily hardships, I lived for a month among them, in a hut in a village with no water or electricity, eventually returning to Bangkok with the disease so many Luos die of, malaria.

I will not say more, lest I spoil the story for you.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Certainly the exercise of recrafting an existing story in a dramatically different cultural setting and voice, as I have done in Hoyt’s War, is certainly an achievement that gives me a great deal of pleasure when I think about it.

I suspect that when I finish Balman the Maltruist, I will get similar joy from having told a story in two gentlemen’s voices, one Indian and one Luo, in alternating chapters.

How many books have you written so far?

My four books so far are:

• Travels with the Fish (HarperCollins India, 1998): A freewheeling and tongue-in-cheek of my globetrotting adventures through places from Chicago to Jerusalem, Turkey to Thailand, and Kerala to Bali; 
• The Book of Answers (HarperCollins India, 2011): An Orwellian satire of a man who inherits a book of answers to India’s problem but doesn’t want to make the world a better place — and the Machiavellian prime minister who uses the closed book to plunge his country into pandemonium, anarchy and chaos, just so he may win an election; 
• Hoyt’s War (Createspace, 2016): One ordinary American’s war to get America back from a lunatic, Trump-like President who has made America the most reviled and ridiculed nation on the planet; and 
• Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand for Indians (Lonely Planet, 2012): A custom made Lonely Planet guide to Thailand for the growing numbers of Indians coming here to vacation.

Interview _ Ellie Stevenson

Ellie Stevenson was born in Oxford and brought up in Australia. She is a member of the Careers Writers' Association and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

She writes feature articles and short stories.

Her first novel, Ship of Haunts: the other Titanic story (Rosegate Publications, 2012), which is available as an e-book and as a paperback, has been described as "engaging and lively ... a real page-turner" and as "thoroughly enjoyable".

In this interview, Ellie Stevenson talks about her concerns as a writer:

When did you start writing?

When I was 10.

I spent part of my childhood in Australia, and I would lie in bed and listen to the sounds of the Australian bush, and think about what I could do with my life. My first published work was a poem published in an Australian state newspaper. Then came a hiatus, quite a long one, but fortunately, that’s over now.

How would you describe your writing?

Fairly eclectic.

Primarily I’m focused on writing more novels but I also write stories, articles and poetry. The poetry's more of a leisure thing, but I like to think it informs my work!

I always wanted to write books, but life and a need for cold, hard cash got in the way. When I finally took my ambition seriously, I started with articles, as a way getting some hands-on experience. But I always planned to be a novelist – I just wasn’t sure if I had the stamina.

Who is your target audience?

Anyone who wants to read my work!

No, seriously, I write for people who love mysteries and a sense of something other-worldly. I love to read ghost stories and books that take us across time and space. Maybe some time travel, or something that haunts or has a bit of a twist.

I write the stories I want to read.

I like novels which speak to the reader, are emotionally strong. And those that challenge the reader’s concepts, while still maintaining a page-turning story. Lyrical language is also important. I love to read books by Maggie O’Farrell and Douglas Kennedy.

Have your own personal experiences influenced your writing in any way?

My novel is a ghost story about Titanic, child migration and living a life under the sea. I’m an historian by nature and I love the past. Three of my family were child migrants and I’ve been heavily influenced by the time I spent living in Australia, an amazing country. I’ve always been passionate about Titanic. As for the ghosts, I can’t really say...

What are your main concerns as a writer?

Making my work the best it can be and improving its rhythm and the way it flows. Having integrity in my stories. Making people wonder if what we know isn’t all there is. Reaching readers.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

Marketing my work. In order to be read, readers need to know you exist. I enjoy promoting my novel and articles but it takes a lot of time, which means less time to write. It’s a constant trade off, especially if you’re an independent author. Every day I do a little bit more.

Do you write every day?

At the moment I’m focused on promoting the novel. But when I’m writing, yes, every day, in allocated time slots until I have to do something else. I stop at that point, or when I come to a natural break. The initial writing isn’t that hard, the real work comes with the plot corrections, improvements to language, and the many revisions. I’m naturally self-critical and my work is never good enough. It’s not a happy trait for a writer to have!

How many books have you written so far?

One so far, Ship of Haunts, although a collection of short stories will be coming out in late September.

How long did it take you to write the novel?

Far too long. The next one will be quicker.

Where and when was it published?

Initially, as an ebook on Amazon (Rosegate Publications). It was published in April 2012, to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of Titanic’s sinking. Print copies are also available, via Amazon.com, or via me if you live in the UK.

How did you choose a publisher for the book?

Because it took so long to write, and I had to meet the April deadline, an ebook was the obvious choice, with printed copies following later. That’s the beauty of independent publishing: the author has control of the book. It’s also the downside – you have to do all the work yourself. Commissioning a cover, getting it proofed, getting it out there. I’d do it again, but it’s a steep learning curve.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work that went into Ship of Haunts?


The book was organic, it developed as I wrote it. And then of course, it needed reworking. I spent much of my time rewriting the novel. Again and again. Next time round, I’m planning the book before I write it!

What did you enjoy most?

Creation of the story, thinking of the plotlines, doing the research. The creative side is why I write. Editing and rewrites are hard work, especially when you’re several drafts in.

What sets Ship of Haunts apart from other things you've written?

It’s my first novel, so in that sense it’s totally different. And Titanic, of course, is quite unique. And the novel encompasses reincarnation, which is a little bit out there (in the West, anyway).

In what way is it similar to the others?

The broader themes are fairly similar to the stories I’ve written: mysteries and loss and a sense of something unexpected, perhaps paranormal. The odd twist or a bit of a chill...

What will your next book be about?

A lost place and a man who... (well that would be telling)

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Having the book in my hands, and seeing it as something outside myself. I wasn’t sure I could ever do this. And now, of course, I’m going to do more...

Related articles:

• Ship Of Haunts by Ellie Stevenson [Book Review], Rennie's Book Blog, November 1, 2012
• Author interview: Ellie Stevenson, by Rachel Pictor, rachelpictor.co.uk, October 8, 2012
• 'Ship of Haunts: the other Titanic story,' by Ellie Stevenson [Book Review], by C L Davies, cldavies.com, September 28, 2012

[Interview] Harry Whitehead

by Nick Edgeworth, The Grassroutes Project*

Harry Whitehead is a novelist, a short story writer and a creative writing lecturer at the University of Leicester. Before that, he worked in the film and TV production industry.

His novel, The Cannibal Spirit (Hamish Hamilton, 2012) is set among the First Peoples of Canada at the turn of the twentieth century, and has been described as "“Unflinching and rigorously unsentimental ... a thought-provoking and impressive read.”

His short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies that include London Lies (Arachne Press, 2012), The Storyteller Magazine and Whimperbang.

In this interview, Harry Whitehead talks about the concerns that inform his work as a novelist and a creative writing lecturer:

To start off, thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed.

Pleasure.

My first question is: where did the creative writing process begin for you? When and why did you start?

Well, I used to win the prizes at primary school at creative writing exercises and competitions, and I think that started it for me. And I always wrote. I never took it seriously I don't think – but I guess everyone who writes stories sort of does take it seriously, don't they?

I did an undergraduate degree in Anthropology when I was 24 – I had been in the Far East for many years – and I read a story whilst I was there: an anthropological story that stuck with me. I won't explain it immediately because it might go back to a question you ask me later, but that story just played in my mind and I ended up doing a Masters degree in Anthropology to follow the story, and then it wouldn't go away, and I did a Creative Writing MA as well, and got sidetracked and wrote a load of other stuff before I eventually came back and wrote that. So I've always written, and enjoyed storytelling from the earliest days, and I got serious about it in my thirties.

Anthropology is a big part of your début novel The Cannibal Spirit. Do you think you're the sort of writer who looks very widely for ideas in interdisciplinary fields?

Yeah, for sure.

Before I joined this department [UoL's School of English] I had an O Level in English Literature so I haven't come from a focused reading past, in the way that English Literature trains you, at all. I come from a much broader space and have read much more multifariously, shall we say. But living abroad for so many years and then studying Anthropology has made me look all over the place for stories.

My book has been reviewed well and badly, and when it's been reviewed badly it's often in terms of its cultural authenticity and arguments about that. I was treading on some pretty delicate ground writing about First Nations people in Canada and people either loved me or hated me for it. Which is all right – that's fine by me.

What was it that attracted you to that setting at that point in time?

Well, I was 25 and I'd just broken my back, and I read this story, actually in a piece by Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the founders of structuralism – so a pretty unlikely spot to originate. I read this story about a nineteenth-century north-west coast shaman who wanted to become a shaman in order to expose the lies and trickery of shamanism. And he learns all these acts of prestidigitation and fraudulence as he saw them, and then a local chieftain has a dream that only he can save his sick grandson. So very reluctantly the guy performs the ritual, and lo and behold the child is cured.

So, this guy, whose name is Quesalid in the story – Quesalid's dilemma fascinated me. It was about belief; it was about the placebo effect; it was about what healing means; it was about rationality – all these kind of things. And it was that story that just wouldn't go away. So I decided when I did my Masters in Anthropology that I wanted to find out who this shaman actually was. And what I learnt about who he actually was was that he was half white, half Native Canadian; he was an anthropologist's assistant as well as a shaman and a chieftain; he was tried for cannibalism in 1900 – and there I had a great story of a man who exists between worlds, as we all do to one extent or another. How do we fight those conflicts that we have inside ourselves?

So it was that that really kind of stuck for me. And it was 18 years, really, from when I first read that story to when I was published.

Was it quite research-intensive?

Yeah, it was. I wrote a draft of the novel in nine months, so in a flash really. My wife, who you just heard texting me, I had just met and I was doing this Ph.D. and I was trying to write this novel, and I'd been researching for 10 years. Just about everything: into the life and the history of the region, the history of the Canadian First People. And I was sat in the British Library surrounded by books piled high. I'd just met her and I was sitting there going, [mock-sobbing] “I can't write my novel! I can't do it – I don't know what to do!”

And she said, “All these books: send them all back,” like that.

And as soon as I threw them all away and started to make it up, it flowed and came out in a burst. But without all those years of them filling me up and then stepping away and being free to just create, one would not have allowed the other, if that makes sense.

Did you find it difficult to arrive at what you felt was an authentic voice for George Hunt [the shaman], or was it more of a difficult labour to get something that sounded right?

This question has been debated since by people. There have been some critical responses to his voice, and some people loved it, others have hated it. There's about 40 years of his letters – of this anthropologist's – that still exist, but they're very tentative and very polite and rather obsequious, and actually not as interesting as the character I was reading about. They always used to put me off.

And then I read this story by Edward Curtis, this famous American photographer who worked with George Hunt, who said that Hunt was prone to murderous rages: he would lose his mind and come stomping down the beach to kill you sometimes, and he was this terrifying huge man. And as soon as that happened he came alive as a person to me - someone I could use and construct. And then I made up his voice.

There are bits of his speech from his letters; there are bits and pieces from the slang of the time; from other people's writings; and it kind of evolved as I wrote. The first draft I wrote in the third person actually, and it was only the second draft that I turned it into the first person. His voice started to come into being. But it was born of all those bits and pieces, and also the flora and fauna of the place and how I imagined the experience of being a hard old bastard of a man, like he was, who lived in these worlds; it would've made him gruff but articulate, if you like.

You mentioned a minute ago writing in the British Library. How do you think living and working in Leicester has altered your approach to writing, if it has at all?

Well, it means I don't have access to the British Library. [Laughs.] That's a pain, because I loved the silence amid the chaos of the city. My own office up here is not quite the same. But the book I'm writing at the moment is thematically a book about psychogeography, and it's set now, in the present. And it's set in the kind of edgelands: there are many different marchlands, edgelands; the urban countryside; the margins of the town, if you like, of the city; those bits inbetween. Everywhere that's inbetween; the forgotten bits around the back of new retail parks and the nowhere scrublands between one building and another. It's all about that.

Of course, Leicester is packed full of that sort of decaying, half-forgotten, inbetween places, so I've been sniffing out the underbelly a bit, walking along the canals and things like that. So it's been quite useful to me actually here. I mean, I'm a Londoner: I was born in Dean Street, above the Pizza Express, in 1967, so it's been tough moving away from what I know in the city, but actually as well it's been quite liberating because the subject of my novel fits the surroundings at the moment.

Would you like to say anything more about your new work?

Yeah, sure.

Well, it's called Nowhere. It's premise is, it's the story of a location scout in the film business who's set the brief to find Nowhere by a film director. And in the middle of nowhere he meets this lady anthropologist who has been diagnosed as having had a nervous breakdown, but actually hasn't at all – she's just seen through how everything is. And they have this furious love affair whilst searching for Nowhere along the edgelands of society, if you like.

It's all set in a very short period of time: a few days of their affair and this guy's location scout. So there you go: I've told you all about it now.

You recently organised this year's Annual Creative Writing Lecture with Laura Esquivel, the hugely popular Mexican writer. As an author yourself, what do you feel you gain with this dialogue, if you like, with authors from completely different cultures?

My remit in having this lecture take place each year is that Creative Writing as a taught subject here in the academy, the enormously popular subject that it is, grew up in the 1880s in Harvard and other American academic institutions and was born from English Studies, and has as its craft tools critical ways in which we approach literature in English Studies. So, it's somewhat blind to itself, given what its supposed universality is.

So, what I am hoping to gain from these kind of dialogues – we had Ben Okri last year, who is based in the U.K., but has a very broad kind of take on what literature is, and then Laura Esquivel, who I thought was fascinating actually in how revolutionary she saw creativity – I mean, real Latin American stuff – what a revolutionary take she had on it. She said we have to get away from telling the same stories, and when we are looking at archetypes, look in a quantum-mechanical way at the mirror of an archetype, the opposite, the negative charge, the opposite character to the character you're writing and see if that's more interesting. That was really something important and new that she had to say. It was all about what I'm trying to do in making a Creative Writing lecture bring people in from outside the Anglophone tradition. So I felt, even though she went off in all kinds of directions, and I think a few people went, “What is she on about?”, I thought it was great, you know. I thought she was really doing something different to what any British writer would've done if they'd been invited to give this lecture.

What do you think? Do you agree?

I would agree: it was not what I was expecting at all, but I found it a really interesting, a really original take on it.

Yeah it was. She was as mad as fish, bless her, but also fantastic! I got to spend a couple of days with her and talking to her, she was so wonderful and engaged, and she really does absolutely believe in what she was talking about. And flipping things upside-down; inverting them, turning them round; you know, not repeating ourselves and how that's actually an answer to the social condition of supermodernity, of the modern condition, a passive consumerism. And how the creative process of writing stories can actively become part of that.

It's not something we talk about in Creative Writing classes in the Anglophone tradition. We just talk about point of view and doing this and doing that. We don't – I don't as a teacher – I've not been taught to say to you guys, “Let's use this to tell some story that really is about something else.” To really plunder the depths. I'm hesitant to do that: classes I'm teaching tend to be introductory classes and I don't want to scare people off, but then after watching Laura Esquivel a bit of me thinks that actually, yeah, maybe I should be scaring people off and engaging the people who want to be engaged.

You know what I mean? What do you think about that? Interesting to throw that at you, since you're one of my students.

I think the classes so far have been valuable and I think I would've felt a bit out of my depth. But then it's interesting to think – I was about to call them the “basic tools” of creative writing, but is that an objective thing, or is that something ingrained in how we think about it in the Anglophone tradition?

I started on about it a little bit in the class on Monday. With Jamaica Kincaid, everything is kind of like what I've been explaining – until it ain't. But when it still works, it still works.

And Alain Robbe-Grillet's take on the nouveau roman – I don't know if you guys have come across him or not - but he says, “I'm not interested in character or plot, point of view, structure, any of this kind of thing. I'm interested in tone, colour, suggestion,” - all those completely different things.

For someone who comes along to these events, or the Grassroutes exhibition and thinks, “That looks fun – I want to do that”... what advice would you give to an absolute beginner who wants to write?

Be wary of your own ambitions. Be absolutely honest that you're not fooling yourself by your ambitions.

Isak Dinesen said something that I have pasted up in my office. She said, “I write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” And that's it.

I mean, Laura Esquivel says, “What should a writer do? Write.”

If you're an absolute beginner you think, “Oh I'd like to be doing that.”

“Why aren't you?” is an important question. What is it that you want? Because there is a degree – not so much in universities, and I haven't found it so much in reality in my students as I thought I might – but there's a degree of a culture of narcissism at writing schools.

In a secular age, how do we answer our extinction after 4,000 weeks of life? By showing the world how authentic, deep and meaningful we are by writing a Great Novel.

Like Nick Cave says, “We call upon the author to explain.”

My advice for a starting writer is have a good look at what it is you want to do. Don't fantasise it too much too soon.

Don't become a writer before you write.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Don't seek to become a writer: seek to write. And then ask yourself what it is you write: what is your purpose? Why? Do it without hope or despair. [Laughs.] Because God knows it's a long process!

I got lucky. I did an MA from 2004 to 2005 and I got my first novel published in 2011: six years, I mean, that's remarkable. I'm not bigging myself up, I'm just saying it's remarkably fortunate how quick that happened. Also, I'd been writing since I was eight and I've always written stories, hundreds of short stories that are rubbish.

So, it's a long old grind and you've got to enjoy the process.

I met this guy when I was on this book tour in Canada who did a survey of 1,500 novelists, and he asked them how old they were when their first novel was published, and the mean age was 42, which is a real surprise I think.

Thanks very much.

A pleasure.

*Nick Edgeworth is a volunteer at Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing, a project that aims to promote Leicestershire's diverse literary culture.

Related books:

,,

Related articles:

• Harry Whitehead, Writers Gallery, Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing 
• Harry Whitehead on The Process of Writing [Video Interview], CivicLeicester, May 29, 2012
• The Cannibal Spirit taps into mystery: Novel examines the inner life of a shaman moving between cultures [Interview], by John Goodman, North Shore News, February 24, 2012

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[Interview_3] Gail McFarland

Gail McFarland writes contemporary romance.

Her novels include Doing Big Things (Lulu, 2012); Wayward Dreams (Genesis Press, 2008); and, Dream Keeper (Genesis Press, 2009). In addition to that, her romantic confessions and short stories have been featured in a number of magazines as well as in the anthologies, Bouquet (Pinnacle Books, 1998) and Can a Sistah Get Some Love? (Lady Leo Publishing, 2010).

Her work is available in both print and e-format.

In this interview, Gail McFarland talks about her experience of e-books, the future of the book and about her short stories:

How much of your work is available in print form and in e-format?

My novel-length work is currently available in print form and available for order and purchase in both online and brick-and-mortar-bookstores. In e-format, readers can find a dozen different stories everywhere from Amazon.com and B&N.com, to the ibookstore, Kobo, Diesel, Sony, and Smashwords.

Of the two formats, as a reader and then as a writer, which do you prefer?

This is a great question! As a reader who grew up pre-ebook, I absolutely love the feel of a book in my hands. I love experiencing the turning of the pages and the whole holding-my-breath as I wait to see what awaits me on the next page thing. But I am at heart a reader. Truth be told, I will read just about anything, so I am reading ebooks.

In my everyday real life, I work in Wellness and Fitness and for me, that is where e-books take the full advantage. They are easy to carry in my gym bag and I can read on the treadmill or while cranking out miles on a stationary bike. E-books are unmatched for downloading manuals and having ready reference available for my classes and clients.

I still love a real paper book, but I guess I’m just a woman of my times and a good e-book works for me.

In your view, what is the future of the book going to be like?

The ease of reading and the portability of e-readers is impressive. Additionally, the opening of the market to indie authors is allowing an unprecedented rise to free and open thought that was often lost among traditional publishers. This leads me to think that more people are reading – a good thing. It also leads me to think that more ideas are being more easily exchanged and that our society, as a whole, is expanding and reshaping itself accordingly – another good thing.

So ultimately, I think that both traditional and indie authors are going to have to step up our game to keep pace with this future, and that we owe this effort to our readers, ourselves, and the ongoing integrity of books.

You have an impressive number of your stories that have been published in a variety of anthologies. How did this happen?

One of the nicest things about writing for publication is that you are able to make contact with people whose hearts sing the same songs as your own. When that happens, how can you say, ‘no’?

I have been fortunate to find myself in the company of a number of lovely ladies for the Arabesque Bouquet Mother’s Day anthology, and the Lady Leo Can a Sistah Get Some Love anthology. Additionally, a number of my short confessions (27 of them!) appeared in collections for the Sterling/MacFadden Jive, Bronze Thrills, and Black Romance magazines.

In each case, I was invited to submit an idea and a subsequent story for the collection.

I was very happy and enjoyed doing it.

And here’s a little bit of a 'scoop' for you and your readers: I will be included in a new anthology featuring the GA Peach Authors in 2013. The anthology will include work from Jean Holloway, Marissa Monteilh (Pynk), Electa Rome-Parks, and me. As authors, we write across a wide variety of genres that include everything from erotica, murder, romance, and mainstream fiction, so this one promises to be big fun.

How have the stories been received?

Anthologies are nice little “samplers” of style and content. A reader may choose the book because they are partial to a particular writer or style, but in the reading, there are always little unexpected and surprising “jewels” to be found, giving the reader something fun and unexpected – a lot of bang for your reading buck!

I have been fortunate to be included in well-planned, well-thought out collections where the writers shared a similar vision and direction. This, combined with skilled editing results in entertaining, often dream-worthy collections of well-developed prose.

Each of the anthologies I have been involved with has generated a series of really nice reviews, lots of email, and even a few new fans of the individual writers.

All of the stories and their associated collections have been well-received, and readers often want to see fully-developed novels that will follow the characters forward.

Related books:

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Related articles:

• Gail McFarland [Interview], by LaShaunda Hoffman, Odinhouse Fantasy, July 14, 2012
• Gail McFarland [Interview_2], Conversations with Writers, April 5, 2010
• Gail McFarland [Interview_1], Conversations with Writers, June 2, 2008

[Book Review] Killing Honour... a beautifully written, heartfelt book

Reviewed by Sarah O’Rourke, The Grassroutes Project*

Bali Rai is considered the writer of British Asian teen fiction, and it’s not hard to see why. Life bursts off the pages of his 2011 novel, Killing Honour. Rai tackles taboo subjects with incredible clarity and passion.

Killing Honour tells the story of Sat, a Leicester-born Asian teenager, whose sister is forced into a marriage with an abusive husband who then goes onto murder her – a so-called “honour killing.” Bai makes his stance clear on these killings in the title of the book and through the voice of his narrator, who never once gives up on his sister, no matter what izzat she has offended. Sat understands that family must come before honour, saying: “[A]ll you’re doing is killing it – killing honour – not defending it,” (KH p.180) but in order to unravel the mystery of his missing sister, Sat comes up against a “wall of silence” in the Sikh community. At the same time, of course, Sat represents those Sikh men who openly condemn such murders.

Killing Honour condemns domestic violence in any form, whether that be against Asian women or white women. By removing the “honour” from the phrase honour killings, Rai exposes these violent acts for what they are: murder without justification. Rai makes it clear how intolerable it can be for women who have to live up to unachievable standards to protect their family’s izzat. Sat notes that he is a male and so the “izzat thing” (KH p91) is easier for him, making his sympathy for women apparent, wishing that his sister had run away, because he could never have lived her life. Rai further instils a sense of sympathy for women by switching the point of view of his narration – sometimes it’s Sat, sometimes it’s third person from Laura’s perspective, and sometimes it’s the abused woman. Here we see the horror of domestic violence and murder from every perspective, from the family to the Asian wife to the abused white girlfriend. Rai considers all these people as victims of the same crime. Rather than privileging one over the other, he states emphatically that it is wrong. That it must be stopped.

Rai paints Leicestershire as a diaspora space – that is a community in which the consciousness of not only the first generation immigrants is transformed, but the indigenous peoples too, each changing and shaping one another together as one cohesive whole. Location figures heavily in Killing Honour, set in and around Leicester, with local landmarks such as De Montfort Hall, Victoria Park, Queens Road, and even Babella’s bar. Sat says that his sister “lived on the other side of Leicester, but it wasn’t far. Nothing in Leicester is.” (KH p.9) And this image of Leicester as a tightknit community can be felt not only in the novel, but in the city itself, with art reflecting reality and vice versa.

In Rai’s novel, Britishness figures as intrinsically culturally diverse. As Rai himself says, “we should celebrate what we have in common” rather than putting our differences first. And so we see Sat drinking from a Bart Simpson mug, the family visiting Disney World and hot dogs being eaten. When Sat gets a girlfriend who is white (a union frowned upon by people from both sides of the cultural divide), he is presented as very much the modern multiculturalist, showing the transformations that have taken place between first and second generations in the diaspora space of Leicester life. Sat says of his girlfriend: “Although we were both British, Charlotte came from one culture and I was from another. We were like the same, and then different too.” (KH, p38)

But this is no glib celebration of multi-racial Britain. We see several examples of racism, far right activism and inter-communal strife. Most notably, we see hatred between Muslims and Sikhs, which Sat puts down to “prejudice” more than “any sense of tradition.” (KH p74) Non-white communities clash on their own terms, while Sat’s own Sikh community clashes with white bigotry, too. We hear an anecdote of his father being mistaken for a terrorist whilst going through customs, racist slurs of “paki wanker” (KH p40) and several declarations of “you don’t understand our community” (KH p115). Perhaps this is what all the tension in Killing Honour comes down to: understanding. Rai counterbalances this sense of violence and distrust between factions with genuine friendships, interracial love and the day to day entanglements that are a staple of multicultural life in Britain.

Bali Rai’s previous works have been celebrated as “verbal brilliance ... on every page” (TES) and Killing Honour is no exception. Each character has her/his distinctive voice, but more than this: their voices ring true. Rai’s ability to capture teenage speech is astonishing and at times, extremely funny, as you hear the voices of Leicestershire locals echoing through the pages, with their “innits” and their “bruvs.”

Killing Honour is a beautifully written, heartfelt book with a genuine and sincere message. Rai is a true inspiration for Leicestershire writers and readers alike, and takes the tradition of Young Adult Leicestershire writing from [Sue] Townsend and into the 21st century.

*Sarah O’Rourke is a volunteer at Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing, a project that aims to promote Leicestershire's diverse literary culture. 

Related books:

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Related articles:

• Bali Rai, Writers' Gallery, Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing
• Want to Write? – Interview with Booktrust Writer-in-Residence Bali Rai, by Marése O'Sullivan, A Younger Theatre, April 5, 2012
• Bali Rai - reggae, ex-gangsters and zombie-demon-cowboys, by Rachael Mott, The Jitty, May 22, 2011
• Interview with Bali Rai author of Killing Honour, by cari3232, Sugarscape, June 9, 2011