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 Debut
novel wins prize set up to honour legacy of late writer
At a special event at Durham Book Festival on Friday evening, Paul
Kingsnorth was announced as the winner of the second annual Gordon Burn
Prize for his debut novel The
Wake by a judging panel which comprised actor Julian Barratt,
poet John Burnside, artist Sarah Lucas, and last year’s inaugural prize
winner, novelist Benjamin Myers.
Set in the three years after the Norman invasion of 1066, The Wake tells the
story of Buccmaster of Holland, a man from the Lincolnshire Fens, who,
with a fractured band of guerrilla fighters, takes up arms against the
invaders. It is a post-apocalyptic story of the brutal shattering of
lives, a tale of lost gods and haunted visions, narrated by a man bearing
witness to the end of his world.
‘The ‘shadow tongue’ vocabulary that is the novel’s architecture
automatically makes The
Wake a unique entity, yet it is so much more than a dazzling
display of linguistic flair,’ said judge Benjamin Myers. ‘Paul Kingsnorth
creates his own world – that of an old England that is both familiar yet
utterly alien – and pulls you in to bear witness to our own bloody
history first hand. Poetry, landscape, mythology and language are shot
through with fleeting flashes of violence on which modern society is
founded. Months after first reading it, part of me is still within this
novel, and I truly believe future generations will regard The Wake as a
classic.’
‘The Gordon Burn Prize looks to celebrate, amongst many things,
risk-takers and people, like Gordon, who are prepared to stare horror in
the face,' said a spokesperson from the Gordon Burn Trust. 'In The Wake, we don’t
know if this is history as conveyed by a psychopath or how it might have
happened or both. Either way, it is an astonishing book. A terrifying and
mesmerising tale of Saxon rebels, it conjures up a blood-soaked Old
England – yet speaks to a Britain of today – a country battling foreign
fundamentalism, fearful of its borders and pitting nature against an
energy-hungry people. The feat of language is breath-taking. The Gordon
Burn Trust cottage is filled with Burn’s books on English regional
dialects – Burn was fascinated by language, its poetic properties and its
power to give people identity, and to mark them, he would have applauded
the astonishing audacity of Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘shadow tongue.’
Paul Kingsnorth is the author of two non-fiction books, One No, Many Yeses
(2003) and the highly acclaimed Real
England (2008), as well as a collection of poetry, Kidland (2011). A
former journalist and deputy editor of The
Ecologist magazine, he has won several awards for his poetry
and essays. In 2009, he co-founded the Dark
Mountain Project, an international network of writers,
artists and thinkers in search of new stories for troubled times. Much of
his writing can be found online at www.paulkingsnorth.net.
The Wake is
his first novel.
The Wake
is published by Unbound, a crowdsource funding platform, whose investors
include actor Mark Rylance. Rylance, currently filming Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for the
BBC, is such a supporter of the book that he joined Paul Kingsnorth at
this year’s Hay Festival, where he read from the book. His performance
can be seen on the Telegraph website.
The Gordon Burn Prize, run in partnership by New Writing North, Faber
& Faber, and the Gordon Burn Trust, was conceived to pay tribute to
the legacy of the late author. An incisive, undaunted writer,
Newcastle-born Burn was a literary polymath, writing forensically on
subjects ranging from celebrity to serial killers, politics to
contemporary art, sport to the media. The Gordon Burn Prize seeks to
recognise writers whose work follows in his fearless footsteps. The
winning writer receives a cheque for £5,000 and the opportunity to
undertake a writing retreat of up to three months at Gordon Burn’s
cottage in Berwickshire.
The shortlist for the prize this year was: The Valley by Richard Benson
(Bloomsbury), The
Kills by Richard House (Picador), The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound), The Trip to Echo Spring by
Olivia Laing (Canongate), American
Interior by Gruff Rhys (Hamish Hamilton), and The Free by Willy
Vlautin (Faber & Faber). |
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New
Writing North news
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Durham Book Festival gets
underway
 It’s been
months in the planning, but Durham Book Festival 2014 is finally here. As you
read this newsletter, we will be dusting down our best dresses and preparing
for the impossibly exciting announcement of the Gordon Burn Prize. The office
is all a-buzz with debate about who has won from this year’s exceptional
shortlist.
The ceremony will kick off nine packed days of events at venues across
Durham City. You can still book tickets for some events – see www.durhambookfestival.com
to check the latest news. If you are joining us this weekend or in the coming
week, we look forward to offering you a warm welcome. If you can’t be here,
do follow the gossip action on Twitter @durhambookfest
using the hashtag #dbf14. |
Newcastle Fund announces
£90,000 investment in New Writing North projects
We are delighted to be included in the list of organisations receiving funding
from the inaugural Newcastle Culture Development Fund at the Community
Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland.
New Writing North has been awarded £90,000 of funding from the Newcastle
Culture Development Fund over three years to increase the reach of our young
writers programme in Newcastle. The funding will allow us to work with
schools, libraries and community organisations to run after-school writing
groups and outreach projects in harder-to-reach communities. We will also
create more opportunities for young writers’ work to be seen and celebrated
with a programme of events by and for young people in theatres and other
cultural venues across Newcastle under the brand ‘Young Writers’ City'.
Watch this space as we roll out the programme from April 2015. |
Verb New Voices:
Supporting New Writers for Broadcast and Performance
On Thursday 6 November we will be hosting a panel
discussion at Arc, Stockton, with Sue Roberts, BBC editor of The Verb and audio drama
R3/4; Alison Boyle, relationship manager literature, Arts Council England;
Matt Fenton, artistic director of Contact Theatre in Manchester; director
Peader Kirk; and writer Louise Fazackerley on this year’s Verb New Voices scheme,
as they discuss ways in which we can most effectively support emerging
writers to create work for broadcast and performance.
Following this, the writers involved in the Verb New Voices development
programme 2014 will be presenting
their works in progress. Louise Fazackerley presents a scratch
performance of Love Is a
Battlefield, her spoken word show about the impact of war on the
domestic lives and emotional health of soldiers and their families, featuring
dance and original music; John Hamilton May’s Jumble Male will tell the story of a young
(every)man and explore an apparent crisis of masculinity in the 21st century;
while Matt Miller’s sometimes confessional storytelling encapsulates seminal
moments growing up along the River Tyne.
Verb New Voices is a spoken word development programme run by the BBC and
Arts Council in association with New Writing North, Arc, Contact Theatre,
Arvon and Writing Squad. Excerpts from all three pieces will be broadcast on
Radio 3’s The Verb
later this year. Tickets for the performance are £3 and free for the panel
discussion but booking is advised. |
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Sali Hughes: Pretty
Honest
 Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle:
Wednesday 5 November, 6.30pm-7.30pm
We are delighted to present a Fourth Estate Literary Salon with beauty expert
Sali Hughes to celebrate the publication of her new book, Pretty Honest. Sali will
be in conversation with Marie Nixon, talking about 20 years of working in the
industry, from assistant make-up artist to beauty editor at The Guardian.
Pretty Honest
debunks the myth that women can’t be interested in beauty and ‘serious
issues’ too and draws on over 20 years of wisdom, advice and expertise to
show women how to make the most of make-up’s physically and emotionally
transformative powers. Tickets: £8.50/£6.50. Book online at www.tynesidecinema.co.uk. |
Submit to Cuckoo
Quarterly
Our online magazine Cuckoo
Quarterly and our print magazine Cuckoo Press are both currently open for
submissions. If you are – or if you know – a young writer, you can find out
how to submit at www.cuckooquarterly.com/?page_id=114. |
People
|
 We’ve had some
brilliant news from writers in our network this fortnight. Join us in raising
a toast to Helen
Cadbury, who was one of our Northern Crime Competition
winners in 2012 and had her first book To
Catch a Rabbit published by Moth. The rights to that book, and
her second, Bones in the
Nest, have recently been bought by independent publisher Allison
and Busby. Both books will be out in 2015.
We were also delighted to hear that Northern Writers’ Award 2013 winner Carys Davies has a
new collection of short stories, The
Redemption of Galen Pike, out with Salt this month.
Ben Wilkinson,
one of this year’s Northern Writers’ Award winners, recently won the Offside
Stories: The Pride and the Passion competition for his poem, John Barnes. Another of
his poems, King Kenny,
features in the November issue of the Official
Liverpool FC Monthly Magazine, out now. Both poems are part of a
sequence on Liverpool Football Club that Ben is currently writing with
support from New Writing North.
Congratulations to Cumbria-based Polly
Atkin, who won this year’s Andrew Waterhouse Award, and who
has gone on to further success, bagging herself the main prize in the Wigtown
Poetry Competition earlier this month.
Seth Insua
lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and is about to publish his graphic novel, Anna the Knight, in a
new digital magazine of short fiction, Cracked Eye. The
first issue is out on 4 November and Anna
should run over the course of eight issues. We look forward to
hearing more from Seth.
Finally, we were so pleased to hear that Forum Books Kids was a recipient of a
James Patterson grant this month. The news means the independent bookshop
will be able to launch their Dangerous Reading Club and start work on a new
garden.
Well done, all. Keep the good news coming! |
Opportunities
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Write a script for
Northumberland Theatre Company
NTC Touring Theatre Company has received funding from ACE Grants for the
Arts to produce 4THOUGHTS:
Myth, Music, Mayhem and Mirth, an evening of four short new plays
which will tour the North in March 2015. The company now seeks writers of new
plays/musicals. Writers may have had some professional productions of their
work or may be complete beginners. Plays must last no longer than 30 minutes
and should be for six actors. Deadline for submission: 29 October. For
further information, see www.northumberlandtheatre.co.uk. |
Emma Press: call for
prose submissions
The Emma Press is now accepting proposals for prose pamphlets, to publish
as part of the Emma Press Pamphlets series. The open call for submissions
will run until 25 January 2015 and the prose pamphlets will begin publishing
from September 2015.
The Emma Press has previously published exclusively poetry, in anthologies
and pamphlets. With its new programme of prose publications, the publisher
hopes to attract ‘talented writers early in their careers, who might not be
ready for a full-length publication, as well as more established writers who
have a pamphlet-length project they would like to pursue’. The call for
submissions invites proposals for formats including short stories, short
plays, essays, recipes and guides. For guidelines see http://theemmapress.com/about/submissions/. |
Competitions
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Solstice Shorts short
story competition
For the shortest day of the year on Sunday 21 December, Arachne Press is
holding the Solstice Shorts Festival. They are looking for submissions of
unpublished short stories on the theme of time. 12 stories will be selected
to be presented at the festival. Closes: 31 October. For full submission
details, see http://arachnepress.com/solstice-shorts/solstice-shorts-short-story-competition/. |
Jobs
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Jobs round-up
Newcastle
University is recruiting a part-time lecturer in creative
writing (poetry). Closes 21 October. For full details, click here.
Leeds Library and
Information Service has been awarded funding from Arts
Council England’s Grants for the Arts stream to deliver a two-year pilot
project, WordPlay – a programme of creative activities in The Art Space, a
recently adapted space in the central library building. The Library Service
has commissioned Dep Arts as project producers to devise and curate a
programme of activities and are now seeking to appoint an external evaluator
to work alongside the steering group and Dep Arts to gather evidence and
deliver a report assessing the impact of the project. Fee: £3,500 to include
all expenses. Closes 17 October. For the brief, see www.departsltd.com/about/jobs-and-opportunities/.
The Forge
is an award winning participatory art commissioning and producing agency that
creates innovative arts projects with and for young people. They are seeking
a creative producer who will play a vital role in the development of the
organisation. Closes 24 October. For full details, see www.intheforge.com.
Northern Stage
is seeking an experienced and creative executive director to work alongside
artistic director Lorne Campbell. They would like to hear from people working
at a senior level in arts administration who are excited by achieving the
theatre’s creative ambitions. Closes 24 October. For an application pack,
email Philippa Leith at pleith@northernstage.co.uk. |
The
Listening Post
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T-Junction International
Poetry Festival
Various venues,
Middlesbrough: 16-20 October
T-Junction is a four-day poetry festival in Teesside, combining readings,
workshops, debates, masterclasses, lectures and launches. For the programme,
see www.tjunctionfestival.co.uk. |
Short Short Story Slam
The Storey,
Lancaster: Saturday 18 October, 8pm
Lancaster is holding its first-ever Short Short Story Slam, taking place
as part of Litfest. The event is organised by Manchester-based writing
collective Flashtag, who are looking for competitors as well as audience
members. Find out more at www.facebook.com/events/341869249270894/. |
Workshops
and courses
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Creative North writing
workshops
The Hub, North
Shields: From Saturday 11 October, 2pm-5pm
Creative North is running a series of workshops including Introduction to
Writing beginning on Saturday 11 October and on Saturday 25 October Writing the
Everyday, covering non-fiction, essay, blog and business writing skills. More
workshops to be confirmed shortly. Workshops last three hours and cost £15.
See www.creativeupnorth.co.uk
for details. |
Northern Lights Writers’
Conference
Waterside Arts
Centre, Sale: Saturday 25 October, 10.15am-4.30pm
Creative Industries Trafford hosts its second annual Northern Lights
Writers’ Conference, featuring author and broadcaster Will Self presenting a
keynote speech and a special masterclass. Northern Lights features workshops
on different aspects of writing, presentations on funding, panel discussions
on marketing, and networking opportunities for emerging and established
writers with renowned publishers, literary agents and authors, including David
Gaffney, Jo Bell and Joanna Kavenna. Tickets: £30. For details, visit www.creativeindustriestrafford.org. |
Creative writing workshop
for young people
City Library and
Arts Centre, Sunderland: Saturday 25 October, 1pm-3pm
Poet and curator Harry Burke will be running a creative writing workshop
suitable for young people at Sunderland Literature Festival. The event is
free, but ticketed. To book, call City Library on 0191 561 1235. |
North East People’s
Assembly 2014
Northern Stage,
Newcastle: Saturday 1 November, 11am-9pm
A day of speeches, discussions and workshops involving a wide range of
campaign groups and covering such topics as the NHS, the attacks on education
and the impact of austerity on people’s lives. Followed at 6.30pm by the
People’s Variety Show with performers including Kate Fox, Steffen Peddie and
Mike Milligan. Tickets: £10/£5 (whole day) or £6/£3 (daytime or evening). For
more information and a full schedule of activities, see www.northernstage.co.uk/whats-on/north-east-peoples-assembly-2014. |
Nancy Campbell: Ice and
the Imagination
Lit & Phil,
Newcastle: Tuesday 4 November 6pm
This wintery workshop will take classic works of polar exploration and
natural history from the Lit & Phil collection as a starting point for
new writing about ice, snow and the environment. Poet and Arctic Book Club
founder Nancy Campbell will introduce work by contemporary writers on the
subject and guide you through prompts to create your own poems and stories.
The workshop is free, but booking is advised. To book call 0191 232 0192. |
Inscribe Fiction
Masterclass: Magical Realism & Erotica
Leeds: Saturday 8
November, 11am-4pm
This masterclass with acclaimed writer Leone Ross will use a combination
of mini-lecture, group work and writing exercises and is suitable for those
already writing short stories and novels, who either want guidance on how to
develop their craft, or who want to refresh their skills. £15/£12. Enquire by
email only to info.inscribe@peepaltreepress.com
or book a place at https://inscribe-fiction-leoneross.eventbrite.co.uk. |
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