News & Blog

How to stay safe when you use your own life material in a novel – Sarah Walton & The Silk Pavilion

  Sarah Walton speaks about drawing on her own life material in her novel The Silk Pavilion, using emotions from lived experiences, and real life exercises to get into the psyche of her characters. The Silk Pavilion was an especially intense emotional writing experience, but Sarah reminds us that a writer …

D. D. Johnston on writing in Scots dialect in his new novel Disnaeland

    In this clip, D.D. Johnston explores the nature of writing in non-standard English, the way characters would actually speak.  a native of Edinburgh, he speaks about writing in a Scottish venacular, and its place in his novel Disnaeland. Disnaeland is set in the fictional Scottish town of Dundule, …

Five books that help you find light in dark times

D.D. Johnston’s Disnaeland is a rare beast of a novel: it takes the stuff of the apocalypse and makes you laugh. Dystopian stories, like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, lead readers into ever-darkening times. Disnaeland starts with the premise that life on earth is already pretty shitty: when the crisis comes, …

Yvonne Blenkinsop, the last Headscarf Revolutionary: RIP

Brian Lavery, Yvonne Blenkinsop, the Lord Mayor of Hull and Mary Denness Brian W. Lavery’s The Headscarf Revolutionaries introduces us to some wonderful, rich characters. Prime among these was Yvonne Blenkinsop, one of the four ‘headscarf revolutionaries’ who led mass protests after the tragic sinking of three of Hull’s trawlers …

Easterine Kire: Spirituality, Nature and Nagaland

Easterine Kire is a poet, novelist, Jazzpoetry pioneer; a “one-woman cultural renaissance” (Vivek Menezes, Scroll). Her latest novel, Spirit Nights, delves deep into the spirituality of her indigenous community, primarily through an elder woman protagonist who experiences prophetic dreams and feels the spiritual world deeply. What follows is a short …

Ectopia Audiobook – A Q&A with producer Pru Khilosia

Martin Goodman’s Ectopia, originally published in 2013, has been republished as an audiobook that’s available on Spotify! It’s now massively accessible with powerful, dramatic narration that enriches already brilliant source material. Listen to the greatness in just a click – right here.   Pru, how are you? Introduce yourself! Coming …

Martin Vopenka vs Cory Doctorow and Kim Stanley Robinson

We’re proud to share that the British Science Fiction Association took on My Brother the Messiah, Martin Vopenka’s provocative sci-fi that combines technology, religion and human nature itself. It’s a stellar review that you can read in full here I was most struck by Matt Colborn’s comparisons of Vopenka and …

Midwest Book Review for RED HANDS

Colin Sargent describes crafting Red Hands, his latest novel about Iordana Ceausescu, like salvaging scattered crystals from a shattered chandelier. For her, telling this past is not unlike shattering into a thousand shards all over again. Sargent’s depiction restores her as a luminescent and resilient whole set against a turbulent …

LGBTQ+ titles from Barbican Press

Terrific early models of LGBT+ publishing came from the likes of Gay Men’s Press  and Naiad Press. Other houses, such as Peter Owen who brought James Purdy and Paul and Jane Bowles to the UK, or St Martin’s Press in the States, folded powerful LGBT+ writing into wider lists. Barbican …

Writing True Stories of Seafolk and the Sea – A conversation with Brian W. Lavery

You live on Hessle Road in Hull, albeit on the posh end. How does it help you as a writer, living in the community you are writing about? Being able to ‘walk’ the setting for my books is invaluable. Even though much has changed in some parts, there are still …

Chris Westoby – Why anxiety, OCD & depression are worth sharing

I’ve had a severe anxiety disorder for my whole life. Growing up, I kept my illness secret, even from my parents. Partly through the shame of the things I thought, the things I was afraid of, my hidden behaviours, but also because it was the 00s and nobody seemed to talk about these …

Maggie Hamand on thrillers, a papal mystery, & PhD advice

Would you call Virgin & Child a thriller? I used a lot of techniques deployed by thriller writers to try to grip the reader, and create a sense of mystery and tension. But it’s a novel that works at many levels, so it’s not a straightforward commercial thriller by any …