Jenny Lewis and frequent collaborator Adnan al Sayegh have been commissioned to write and film a poem for the COP26 Climate Conference.
They will be performing it live in London on Saturday 10 October, and the film will be shown in Glasgow at the conference itself.
More details here.
MSt alumna Rose Edwards has published her second novel with UCLan. The Ember Days follows Rose’s earlier novel, The Harm Tree, on 7 October.
“Exiled from a broken land, two friends try to escape the darkness they left behind them. Together again, Torny and Ebba reach Vellsberg, an outpost of the Southern Empire, hoping for a safe haven. Instead, they find families driven by ambition, a strange young woman who doesn’t seem to belong, and the bloody consequences of the Empire’s attempt to control the north. When Vellsberg is attacked, Torny and Ebba entrust themselves to Aisulu, a lone rider from beyond the eastern edges of the Southern Empire. Betrayed and pursued, they flee through a land succumbing to a strange plague. Invisible flames afflict the penitent, and whispers of a new Martyr and his False Disciple follow at their heels. Unwilling to face the things they’ve done to survive, Torny and Ebba find themselves torn apart again. After all, what hope is there, when once you have been monstrous? What peace can there be, when you have betrayed your own?”
More information here.
The Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW) is pleased to announce Jinwoo Park winner of the 2020 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award for his manuscript The Oxford Soju Club.
The judges say, “Park’s accomplished fiction manuscript is a riveting ‘tale of mystery and intrigue, C.I.A. agents, false identities, betrayal and love, each character committed to their own cause’.”
More details here.
“Moscow, 1987. As the Cold War begins to thaw, one of the great novelists of the twentieth century, Graham Greene, meets his old MI6 boss and notorious Soviet spy, Kim Philby. The two men raise their vodka glasses and talk about old times. How much did Greene know about Philby’s ways? Did the Red Spy betray his old friend as much as he did his own country? And who is listening in the room next door…?”
A Splinter Of Ice arrives at the Jermyn Theatre on 14-30 October after an acclaimed national tour. Ben Brown‘s political drama is directed by Alan Strachan with Alastair Whatley, and stars Olivier Award winner Oliver Ford Davies (Game of Thrones) as Graham Greene, Stephen Boxer (The Crown) as Kim Philby, with Karen Ascoe as his wife Rufa.
A Co-production with Original Theatre. More details here.
Described by the publisher as, ‘an inspirational manifesto for re-igniting our passion for life and our inner drive,’ MSt Alumnus Sharath Jeevan’s new book is written to help the reader achieve more lasting fulfilment.
Published on 2 September 2021, Intrinsic ‘shows us how we can fall back in love with our lives, and create the lives we want.’
For more information about the author visit his website.
Dr Clare Morgan, founder and director of the MSt in Creative Writing, will this month be judging the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize 2021.
In a town in which the history of the English language can be traced back by centuries, the Flash Fiction prize celebrates one of the newest forms in literature with a biannual competition and a prize of £1000.
The panel instructs entrants to ‘delight us, surprise us, scare us.’ See the website for news of the winning entry, and information about past winners and future competitions.
MSt alumnis Chris Viner has a new book coming out with J. New Books on 1 August 2021.
A portion of the royalities from novella Brief Tenancies will go to the Foundation for Peace.
A trailer for the publication can be viewed here.
The Irish Government, in partnership with the Arts Council for Ireland, has announced that Jennifer Thorp will be a recipient of the Decade of Centenaries Markievicz Award bursary scheme for artists in 2021.
The award, named in honour of artist Constance de Markievicz provides support for artists from all backgrounds and genres in producing new work that reflects on the role of women in the period covered by the centenary commemorations and beyond.
A full press release can be found here.
Adnan Al-Sayegh and Jenny Lewis will be reading from their ground-breaking dual-language Arabic/English version of part of Al-Sayegh’s astonishing anti-war epic poem ‘Uruk’s Anthem’. Giving voice to the profound despair of the Iraqi experience of recent wars, this superb translation brings the eloquent original Arabic epic to a new readership.
“To see such a significant selection from this major work of world literature in this thrilling translation gives me great pleasure. This fine poet of terror and tenderness has found the translators he deserves.” – Leona Medlin, Mulfran Press, Cardiff
https://cardiffpoetryfestival.com/2021-event-18/
MSt alumna Lani Yamamoto’s Ours and Others has been shortlisted for The Novel Prize 2020, “a new biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers around the world”. The publishers are Fitzcarraldo Editions, Giramondo and New Directions.
Selected from from close to 1500 submissions worldwide, the six book shortlist includes:
(from the announcement)
“- Lani Yamamoto’s Ours and Others’, a metaphysical mystery of sorts in two parts. In the first, the child of a fallen cult leader tracks an escaped sibling through an endless forest; in the second, the amnesic narrator wakes in a strange, desolate land, and tries to piece together the past. Lani Yamamoto has written and illustrated six children’s books, published in fourteen languages. Her work has been nominated for the Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize, the Icelandic Literary Prize for Children’s and YA Books, the Reykjavík Children’s Book Prize, and the Italian Scelte di Classe Award. She holds a BA in psychology from Bryn Mawr College, and master’s degrees in both creative writing and the study of religions from the University of Oxford. from the US, she has lived in Iceland for twenty-five years.
…
The Novel Prize offers $10,000 to the winner in the form of an advance against royalties, and simultaneous publication of their novel in the UK and Ireland by the London-based Fitzcarraldo Editions, in Australia and New Zealand by Sydney publisher Giramondo, and in North America by New York’s New Directions. The judges are looking for novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and are innovative and imaginative in style.
The Novel Prize is managed by the three publishers working in collaboration. Submissions were open from 1 April to 1 July 2020, with Fitzcarraldo Editions reading submissions from Africa and Europe, Giramondo from Asia and Australasia, and New Directions from the Americas. The winner will be announced in February 2021, and published in early 2022.”
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