I’ve just received some amazing advance praise for The Monster’s Wife from one of my favourite authors, Sara Maitland: That Mary Shelley has a lot to answer for! This is an extraordinary novel, an honourable response (neither venerating nor sneering) to its progenitor, while being startlingly original. Kate Horsley has grounded and voiced her Frankenstein “sequel” in the Orkneys […]
I had a great day last Thursday making ambrotypes with artist Vineta Gailite. Vineta’s hand-made dolls, sculptures and recent shadow puppet theatre work, Imaginary Islands, are beautiful, eery and full of atmosphere. I love the way each of her pieces tells a story or draws on one. I’ve commissioned Vineta to make a special doll for the youngest member of our family, Violet (age 5), and what she’s […]
John Brewer and I will be taking wet plate portraits for this all-day event on Saturday April 12th organised by Michele Selway in an empty shop on Chorlton High Road. All profits go to the final year students’ Contemporary Photography Final Degree Show at Stockport College in June. Wet Plate Collodion Fundraiser Saturday, 12th April 2014 at 10am – 5pm 486 Wilbraham […]
I’m thrilled to bits with this eye-catching cover for my first novel, The Monster’s Wife, due out in July with Barbican Press. The artwork by Jason Anscomb of Rawshock Design is wonderfully original and at the same time absolutely in the spirit of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, from which my novel draws its inspiration. The Arcimbaldoesque collage of natural objects is […]
Recently, I participated in an international wet plate series called The Mask Series. The project was coordinated by Shane Balkowitsch who assembled 150 alternative photographers from over 25 countries, making the series the largest international wet plate collaboration since Frederick Scott Archer first invented the process in 1848. The goal is to raise awareness for the technique and also create a […]
21st June 2013 12:30 pm 5:00 pm Lecture Theatre 3, Furness College, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YG Discover the 19th century art of wetplate collodion photography, in which images are taken on tin and glass. See the process in action and have your portrait taken on tin with a Victorian camera! 12.30 pm onwards, Furness: Tea, coffee and soft drinks served. 1pm – 1:30 pm, […]
I recently wrote an article called “Interrogations of Society in Contemporary African Crime Writing” for a special edition of the journal Moving Worlds. Crime Across Cultures, edited by Lucy Evans and Mandala White, “seeks to examine how discourses of crime and criminality are produced in a global context that extends well beyond the cloisters of Orwell’s English middle class. We […]
Look out for New Short Story competitions at Sentinel Literary Quarterly, including the African Prisons Project competition judged by Alison Lock and the Quarterly Short Story competition judged by me. SENTINEL NIGERIA ALL-AFRICA SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2013 Closing Date: 28-Feb-2013 Theme: Open Length: 1500 words maximum (Excluding title) Prizes: N35,000 (1st), N20,000 (2nd), N10,000 (3rd), N4000 x 3 (High Commendation). Fees: N450 / £2.50 per […]
Two of my poems, ‘On Mending a Lost Letter’ and ‘Blue Plums’ have just appeared in Seventh Quarry Magazine and it was lovely to get my copy of it in the post and read some of the fantastic writing featured in there. Here’s one of the poems of mine that was published in Issue 17, Winter 2013: On Mending a Lost […]
I’m excited to learn that Jason Anscomb of Rawshock will be designing the jacket cover for my novel. I think his collage and design work is fab, e.g. this stylish cover (above). I’ve had a few ideas cover-wise, mainly involving the long, red hair of the main character, Oona, floating away from her in the underwater scene, quoted here: The boat dipped […]
