Jersey Festival of Words 2019: Year 5

2019 marks the fifth year of Jersey Festival of Words; it feels like no time at all and also as though the Festival has been part of the landscape for much longer. This year, the events featuring female writers are predominantly non-fiction events, but there’s still an interesting range of subjects and some very special moments.

Those special moments come at the beginning and end of my Festival experience. On Friday evening the headliners, Kate Dimbleby and Cathy Rentzenbrink, create a show called ‘Out of Our Comfort Zones’. Dimbleby (yes, of that family) is a singer who wants to write longer pieces than three-minute songs and Rentzenbrink is an author (The Last Act of Love and A Manual for Heartache) who wants to sing. After sharing with us how they met and telling us their own stories – including Kate introducing us to Roland, the loop station which allows her to layer her vocals on stage – the fun begins. Kate asks Cathy to hum and we all join in to provide an accompaniment as Cathy opens her mouth and sings whatever notes she feels like. This is followed by a rendition of Stand By Me. Rentzenbrink appears exhilarated. The audience is collectively delighted that we’ve been allowed to witness this and to sing along in the darkness of the Opera House.

Then it’s Kate’s turn to be plunged into the new as Cathy sits her down with pen and paper, a timer set to five minutes, and some prompts related to memoir writing. We’re all invited to join in again. When the timer goes off, I’m lost in prose and surprised at what I’ve written. Kate, it turns out, has made one earlier. Following her initial meeting with Cathy, she began working on a memoir about her grandma, Mimi aka Dilys Thomas, who was the wife of Richard Dimbleby. It quickly becomes apparent that Kate can write and I’m already looking forward to being able to read the completed work.

The evening’s rounded off with an unexpectedly vulnerable moment where Cathy admits that she links singing to being drunk in the pub her parents ran. Now she no longer drinks, she isn’t sure she can disconnect the two things. Kate encourages Cathy to sing a sea shanty, one which Cathy learned from her dad, and Cathy does, growing in confidence as the piece progresses. As we leave the venue, there’s a sense that we’ve been part of something bigger than a literary event tonight. Something changed while Kate and Cathy were on stage and they’ve inspired us to try an activity that scares us too.

Saturday begins with a writer whose debut, award-winning book, The Salt Path came out of a terrifying life experience. Raynor Wynn begins her event with Andy Davey by explaining how a financial dispute with a friend led to the loss of the property her and her husband, Moth, had bought and restored twenty years earlier. This was compounded by Moth being diagnosed with a terminal neurodivergent disease. Determined to wrest some control over the situation, and inspired by Mark Wallington’s book 500 Mile Walkies, Raynor and Moth set off to walk the South West Coast Path. Raynor says they were drawn by the idea of following a line on a map. Physically moving forwards became a reason to go on, even though the path is 630 miles of relentless climes.

What stands out about Raynor’s story is the poverty her and Moth faced and how people reacted to their situation. She talks about how they underestimated the effect of hunger while walking the path and wild camping. A direct debit they forgot to cancel – house insurance for a house they no longer owned – led to them having pennies left with which to feed themselves. She talks about the narrowness of the path and how this forces interaction with the people you pass. Initially they told people the truth about losing their house, but the reaction from strangers – Raynor says she could see them physically draw back – led to Raynor and Moth changing their narrative. Instead, they told people they’d sold their house in a midlife moment. Now their story was inspirational. This has clearly affected Raynor and she states, ‘I’ve got something to say about homelessness’. It’s something I’m interested to hear more about – and in the current climate in the UK, it’s a topic many others should be paying attention to as well.

The day continues with another hot political topic via Leah Hazard, the author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story. Leah tells Cathy Rentzenbrink that she wanted to show the reality of her job and the experiences of giving birth. She comments that there’s a tendency to trivialise women’s experiences and their work, noting that the book’s been treated differently to recent medical memoirs written by men. Cathy says it’s unusual that they’re talking about normalising an experience that lots of people have been through.

Leah shares a range of stories. She talks about supporting teenagers giving birth and the care someone young and vulnerable needs; the ‘amazing’ experience of delivering a baby created via assisted conception to a lesbian couple, and, harrowingly, about the women she sees ‘on an almost daily basis’ who are being trafficked, and the holistic care they try to provide for these women. The job is ‘fascinating, endlessly, and challenging’. Hazard ends by saying she hopes the book ‘will make a difference. Individually. And maybe on a broader scale’.

Someone whose life did change enormously after having three children is Janet Hoggarth. She talks to Sara Palmer about how the events that followed the end of her marriage led to her first novel The Single Mums’ Mansion.

I’m on board as soon as Janet says she was told by a university tutor, ‘Your writing is fairly vulgar. No one wants to hear swearing. No one wants to read stories about girls having sex on a building site.’ Janet’s story is slightly more complicated than that, however. Not long after the end of her marriage, two of her friends found themselves in similar circumstances: one’s marriage broke up a month after Janet’s; the other gave birth only for her fiancé to leave four days later. The latter moved into Janet’s house so they could support each other as single mums – Janet’s children were 5, 3 and 1 when her marriage ended – and all three women synched the weekends when the children were with their dads so they could relax together. ‘It was really really magical. It was freedom.’

At the same time, Janet became interested in what she terms the ‘beardy weirdy’ aka holistic rituals and healing. She tells Sara she has a crystal in her bra and that she’s a trained reki healer. She cites two books which were important in her thinking The Journey by Brandon Bays and The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Janet detailed all of these experiences on a blog which her agent eventually convinced her to turn into a novel. It sounds like a riot and I leave the event keen to read it.

Saturday ends with more laughter as I interview Jenny Eclair, who is a joy. I’ll leave Festival reviewer Andy Davey to fill you in on that one.

Interviewing Jenny Eclair is pretty special but the magical moment that ends the Festival for me is Ana Sampson’s event about her poetry anthology She Is Fierce. Ana tells Richard Pedley that she compiled the book after realising that there were ‘more men called William’ than women in her previous anthologies and that when she looked for an anthology of poems written by women, she couldn’t find one. Ana’s passion for the poems she chose is evident in the way she talks about her reasons for including them and the decision to curate the anthology by theme, so readers could find poems that suited their mood. What makes this event so special though is the readings of poems that punctuate the conversation. Poems by writers including Lizzie Siddal, Yrsa Daley Ward, Hollie McNish and Imtiaz Dharker are read aloud by selected audience members. There’s something lovely and relaxing about being read to and especially so when the texts are poems. It allows us a real flavour of a carefully curated anthology.

My trips to Jersey Festival of Words are always lovely, but this year is especially so. Here’s to the next five years of wonderful events.

Festival photos by Peter Mourant.

Reframing the Conversation: Jersey Festival of Words, part one

The Jersey Festival of Words took place between the 26^thand 30^thSeptember. I was delighted to be invited back for the fourth year running, not only because Jersey’s such a beautiful place to spend a few days but also because it’s been a pleasure to watch this festival grow and bring such a wealth of interesting writers to the island.

Photograph by Peter Mourant.

One of the themes that runs (ha!) through this year’s events is a reframing of the conversation around exercise and women’s bodies. It’s no surprise to find journalist, runner, swimmer and author of two books about exercise –  Running Like a Girland Leap In– Alexandra Heminsley involved in this. On the Friday evening, Alex interviews Bryony Gordon whose book Eat, Drink, Runchronicles her journey from couch to running a marathon. Then on Saturday afternoon, Alex herself is interviewed by Cathy Rentzenbrink alongside Libby Page, author of debut novel The Lido.

Frankly, I could review Bryony’s event purely by using direct quotations. If you need a soundbite expressing things about exercise that other people (including myself) will recognise, she’s your woman.

Alex and Bryony begin by discussing the version of sport and exercise we’re sold. The idea, perpetuated right from primary school, that if you’re not good at sport you shouldn’t be doing it. This is followed by the marketing of running to women as something to do to make ourselves acceptable to others. Bryony: ‘I was scared of exercise…for me it was so rooted in self-loathing. I wanted to look like someone else.’ She began running ‘in desperation’ in the hope it would help her mental health. ‘I just needed to stay alive.’ It worked. Bryony realised there was a point where ‘I wasn’t doing it for the losses, I was doing it for the gains’.

Alex: Did you go quite slowly to begin with?
Bryony: What do you mean to begin with?

Bryony decided to run the marathon after thinking it ‘can’t be harder than the days when I can’t get out of bed’. Alex talks about how marathons are good for mental health because you’re ‘locked into a structure’ with the training regime. Bryony mentions the high that comes around mile 10 or 11, ‘I did that with my own body and that’s kind of magic’.

Having run the marathon in her underwear despite being told she needed to lose weight in order to do so, Bryony discusses the so-called ‘obesity crisis’ in relation to exercise. ‘When people who are overweight go out and show themselves and do exercise we’re all, “Put it away”. Obesity to me is as much a mental health problem as it is a physical one.’

It’s a theme that’s picked up again at the lido the following afternoon. ‘There’s no lean thigh or buff arm in the universe that will keep you exercising. It’s community and friendship,’ says Alex. This is echoed by Libby whose novel The Lido is about people coming together to save a local lido, making friends and enjoying swimming along the way.

Libby mentions how ‘community spaces are very much under threat’, linking the threatened closure of lidos to the rapidly disappearing libraries. She also mentions that one of her characters, Kate, who is in her 20s, suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. She’s ‘feeling quite lost in the world’ and it’s the sense of community and the friendship with Rosemary, who’s in her 80s, which allows her to feel less alone.

Alex talks about the connection between swimming, breathing and stress and how helpful the sport can be for managing anxiety. You have to be calm, she says. She thought learning to swim outdoors would give her control over an element but there is no controlling the sea. She describes swimming in the sea as ‘completely intoxicating’. Libby adds that swimming outdoors ‘really changes your perspective of things’ and relates an anecdote about being interviewed at Brockwell Lido in the rain. She didn’t want to get into the water for photographs but ‘It was suddenly just beautiful’.

Cathy mentions that she lives by the sea. She’s been contemplating swimming but hasn’t plucked up the courage yet. Both Libby and Alex offer tips but it’s the benefits to mental health that are mentioned which hold the most appeal. Libby says, ‘It makes you really happy!’ while Alex tells us she was at the lido at 6am with Bryony before the latter’s flight back to London. They swam as the sun rose and Bryony said, ‘I’m going to hold this in my body all day now’.

After the event, a group of women descend the steps into the water. Cathy and I watch standing at the railings above. It looks like fun; it looks like something we might try soon.

Books of the Year 2017

Due to life interfering, I read half as many books this year as I have in previous years. What I have read though has, on the whole, been incredibly good. I’ve selected the ten I loved the most and included five others I highly recommend at the end of the piece. If I’ve reviewed the book in full, there’s a link at the bottom of the description.

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife – Meena Kandasamy

The story of a marriage between a young, educated woman and a university lecturer. When I Hit You is both a tale of domestic violence and of a woman becoming a writer by writing her way out of her situation. Kandasamy’s experimental style frames the experience as though the narrator is witnessing the horror brought upon her. It’s brutal, it’s thoughtful, it’s shocking. It’s incredibly relevant in 2017.

You can read my full review and watch my interview with Meena Kandasamy here.

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky – Leslie Nnedi Arimah

Hands down the best short story collection I’ve ever read. Arimah does things with the form that shouldn’t be possible. In the first story, for example, the protagonist is held in a moment while the back story of everything that led to that point is revealed and yet the tension holds sharp. Many of the stories are concerned with the way women are shaped by/shape themselves around men, all of them carry an emotional punch.

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi

Two sisters, Effia and Esa, born in West Africa in the 1770s are separated. One becomes the wife of a slave trader, the other is shipped to America as a slave. Gyasi follows the two lines to the present day. Each chapter focuses on the next branch of the family tree and works as a short story in its own right. Alongside this runs the story of the creation of the black race, its reasons and consequences. It’s an incredible achievement.

My full review is here.

Attrib. and Other Stories – Eley Williams

Williams’ debut short story collection is full of animals, clever word play, humour and love. While all of these elements contribute to intelligent, engaging stories, it’s the emotions at the core of the tales which elevate them to something special. The reader’s transported to the position of the narrator, feeling their anticipation at the potential lover standing next to them or their loss at the one who’s just left.

You can read my full review and watch my interview with Eley Williams here.

First Love – Gwendoline Riley

Neve is a writer in her mid-thirties, exploring her marriage to an older man, Edwyn, and the impact previous relationships, both romantic and familial, have had on who they are now. Almost everyone in Neve’s life is abusive in some form; Riley conveys this through a range of incidents told from Neve’s perspective, leading the reader to question whether or not she’s telling the truth. Searing and utterly pertinent in 2017.

My full review is here.

Vernon Subutex 1 – Virginie Despentes (translated by Frank Wynne)

Vernon Subutex once ran a legendary record shop in Paris. When his benefactor and musician friend, Alex Bleach, dies, Vernon is left homeless. Subutex moves between the houses and apartments of friends and acquaintances before ending up on the streets. Despentes gives a searing commentary on Western society’s views of a range of hot topics: social media, hijabs, the rich, sex workers and a whole lot more.

The End We Start From – Megan Hunter

An unnamed narrator gives birth to a boy as floodwaters rise in the U.K. Soon London is covered and the narrator and her new family can’t return to their flat. They move to their in-laws and then on to a refugee camp. Also works as a metaphor for the first year of motherhood. Taut and compelling.

My full review is here.

Homesick for Another World – Ottessa Moshfegh

A collection of stories about ordinary people at their worst, it’s a mirror held up to today’s society: to the misogyny, to the privilege, to the hypocrisy. Some of the characters know better but can’t be arsed to do better; some of them make an attempt but fall flat at the first hurdle. The collection’s full of characters for whom, essentially, nothing changes. Only Moshfegh could pull that off.

My full review is here.

Elmet – Fiona Mosley

“Daddy“ builds a house in a copse in the woods for himself and his teenage children, Daniel and Cathy. The land on which he builds is owned by Price, the most influential man in the area. Daddy is fully aware of the antagonism this will cause, but, as the best bare-knuckle fighter in the U.K. and Ireland, he wields his own form of power. From this moment, the two men are pitted against each other; it’s a matter of when, not if, the violent tension will explode. An exploration of gender roles and what happens if you transgress them, as well as a commentary on class and privilege.

I wrote about why Elmet is an important working class novel for OZY.

Seeing Red – Lina Meruane (translated by Megan McDowell)

At a party, Lucina feels a pain and blood begins to fill her eyes. She begins to go blind. The doctor tells her he can do nothing other than monitor the situation, leaving her to adjust to a life in which she has to rely on others to help her. She is furious and her anger increases as the story progresses. Told in flash length chapters with short, spiky, repetitive sentences. Horrifying and brilliant.

You can read my full review and watch my interview with Lina Meruane here.

And the highly recommended:

Tinman – Sarah Winman

Ellis and Michael are inseparable until Annie arrives in their lives and Ellis marries her. A story of hidden love, friendship, AIDS and art. Beautiful and heart-wrenching.

A Book of Untruths – Miranda Doyle

A memoir about Doyle’s family. Every chapter reveals a lie that’s been told while questioning the reliability of memory and the purpose of memoir writing.

A Manual for Heartache – Cathy Rentzenbrink

An indispensable guide for when the worst happens to you or someone close to you. My piece about it is here.

The Lonely Hearts Hotel – Heather O’Neill

The love story of performers Rose and Perrot and also a scathing commentary on patriarchal society’s treatment of women, particularly with regards to sex and shame.

My full review is here.

The Other Half of Happiness – Ayisha Malik

The sequel to Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged. Sofia’s married to Conall but there’s a whopping great secret he hasn’t told her. Has a punch the air, feminist ending.

My full review and interview with Ayisha Malik is here.

On A Manual for Heartache by Cathy Rentzenbrink and why I’m reclaiming Christmas

In 2015, Cathy Rentzenbrink’s first book The Last Act of Love was published. It’s an incredible memoir about the impact of her brother’s road traffic accident on her and her family. In the introduction to A Manual for Heartache, Rentzenbrink talks about what happened after The Last Act of Love came out; the stories other people told her about their own grief, the advice they asked for in order to support others dealing with loss.

This is the book I wish I’d had when the worst happened, full of the advice I wish I’d been given. It’s also the book I’d like to have beside me for whatever the future may hold. I wanted to pull all my thoughts together in one place, to have something to refer to when life took another twist, or started to look bleak around the edges.

In short chapters, Rentzenbrink covers how we hide our stories because the pain is too much to bear; how grenades are thrown into our lives and the guillotine comes down on what’s gone before. She gives us ‘An Etiquette Guide for Bad News’ and suggestions of what we can do for ourselves. She talks about her depression and anxiety, what helps and what doesn’t, and she gives advice to both her young son and her future self.

I’ve read A Manual for Heartache three times this year. The first time was on the 1^st of May, a week before my marriage ended. I didn’t know my marriage was about to end until the moment it did. It was, as Rentzenbrink calls it, a grenade moment.

In the immediate aftermath, in the mess of what now and how do I cope and trying to carry on doing my job and co-parenting my stepson, I took to carrying A Manual for Heartache around with me. I took it on visits to see my trainee teachers; I took it to the job interview I had two days later (I got the job); I took it to my friend’s where we drank bottomless cups of tea while I cried and she stroked my hair. Sometimes I took the book out of my bag and held it or put it on the table next to me. I didn’t re-read it, I didn’t need to. It was enough that it was there, that it had been sent to me at exactly the right time. A coincidence, no doubt, but a very welcome one.

The second and third readings were prior to interviewing Rentzenbrink at two festivals: Jersey Festival of Words in September and Off the Shelf festival in October. The conversation at each of these events was different; we were in different venues, in different cities at different times. But there was one thing we discussed on both occasions which took on more resonance for me than it had when I’d read about it.

Just past the midway point in the book there’s a chapter titled ‘Emotional Time Travel’.

Since I stopped treating time like the enemy, I’ve started to have a bit of fun with it and have invented a new game I call reclaiming. The first success I had was with rain. Rain has often been present when things have gone awry with me, and I began to suspect it was a contributing factor rather than a coincidence. I’ve learned that when faced with any situation, our brains start scanning for previous experiences so that we know how to respond to this new challenge. This was helpful when we needed to know what to do when a tiger hove into view, less so in a world where we are constantly bombarded with stress and stimulation. This is how we get triggered. I realized that when I sit and stare at the rain, my mind starts up a slideshow of all my previous breakdowns and pretty soon my mood is dipping because all I’m doing is remembering miserable episodes. I decided to see if I could rewire my brain.

One of the things Rentzenbrink did was buy some ‘magnificent mini wellies, grey with white and yellow daisies’ which she wore to both of our events. They were joyful and I took great delight in making her wave her foot in the air so the back row could see them. She then talked about playing in the rain with her son and how much fun they’d had, how she’d created new memories to override the old ones.

Not long after mine and Cathy’s second event, a friend asked me the question I’d been dreading: what was I doing for Christmas? I hate Christmas. I’ve hated it for years. The reasons for this are not ones I want to explain to anyone I’m not close to. This makes conversations with acquaintances and colleagues difficult. Responses from them which include references to Scrooge make me rage. But Cathy’s success at reclamation had triggered something: did I really want to feel miserable every year about an event that’s pretty much unavoidable? And, for several years now, the build-up to Christmas, the anticipation of the day, has been far worse than the day itself. I’m single again, I have no obligations, I can do whatever I like. What if I try to reclaim Christmas?

So far, I’ve got an advent calendar for the first time in a decade and I’ve bought new decorations for the tree, including some amazing Kate Bush ones. I let my stepson do the decorating.

As for Christmas Day, I’m spending it on my own, making my own rituals. Panettone for breakfast; a long walk listening to my favourite music; plenty of cheese, and binge watching a TV show (a re-watch of Breaking Bad this year). I’m looking forward to it.

There’s a line in a novel being published next year which says, ‘Any book is a self-help book, if you read it right’. A Manual for Heartache isn’t any book though, it’s a wise friend, a comforting hug, a light cutting through the darkness.

Thanks to Picador for the review copy.

Jersey Festival of Words, Days Three and Four: Changing the Conversation

Day three of the festival begins with me chairing two events. The first is Cathy Rentzenbrink who I interview at Jersey Hospice. It’s an amazing setting, a £5 million facility on a hill overlooking the sea. The event goes well; if you haven’t seen Cathy speak about her books and her experiences, I highly recommend it. She speaks so eloquently, full of heart and compassion and makes time for everyone who comes to share their experiences with her too. She’s also very funny and that feels important considering the subject matter.

The second event is a panel on fake news and social media curation with Felicia Yap, author of the dystopian thriller Yesterday; Miranda Doyle, author of the memoir A Book of Untruths, and Peter Mourant, Picture Editor of the Jersey Evening Post. We discuss their work’s relation to the truth, Twitter and Donald Trump. I recommend both books, very different but both very interesting.

The last four events I watch, over the remainder of Saturday and into Sunday, all have something in common: they’re about books that are beginning to change the conversation. Whether that conversation is about women and sexuality, trans women, Muslim women or the stigma around mental health, each contributes to the shift that’s beginning to take place around these topics (colour me an optimist).

First up is Rhyannon Styles, author of the The New Girl, a memoir about her transition. The interview gets off to a poor start when the interviewer uses Rhyannon’s dead name twice in the introduction. She corrects him from off-stage.

Rhyannon has lots of interesting things to say about her experiences and there’s plenty for us to hear about the way trans gender people are treated. She talks about recognising something of herself in Madonna in the Beautiful Stranger video. Art college was ‘the breath of fresh air I needed’ and where she first met people with similar interests – music, film, artists. At the time she identified as a gay male, ‘I let the role of a gay male dictate my sexuality’. She describes the nightclub Heaven as ‘monumental’ for her. It was a safe place to express herself and she began dressing and performing as female. In 2011, she saw the TV programme My Transsexual Summer which she describes as ‘the key to the door’.

‘You don’t transition on a whim,’ says Rhyannon, describing it as a long, hard, arduous process. The psychologist she saw was sexist, asking her whether she wore dresses and heels when she attended her appointment in jeans and a sweater. There was an 18-month waiting list at the gender clinic so Rhyannon bought hormones online and began taking them.

She discusses the other elements of her transition: the changes to her body; the laser hair removal treatment she describes as ‘eighteen session of torture’; the speech therapy, and the clothing experiments. ‘Some of my outfits are still mental…I was like the kid in the sweetshop.’

Early in the interview, Rhyannon’s asked what’s acceptable in terms of language. She explains that trans is an umbrella term. The best way to approach the issue would be to say, ‘Hi, Rhyannon, how would you like me to describe you? What’s your preferred pronoun?’

This desire to learn seems at odds with other parts of the interview, however. The story about the parents who removed their son from a school because of a transgender child in his class is raised. The interviewer mentions The Daily Mail to which Rhyannon replies, ‘The Daily Mail is hysterical’. On the subject of uniform rules and clothes for school she says, ‘Clothes are all made from the same fabric, they’re just cut in different ways’. The interviewer pushes her asking if she can understand the parents’ perspective. I don’t see why Rhyannon, or any other trans person, should be expected to understand the point of view of someone who’s transphobic.

Towards the end of the interview, the conversation turns back to Rhyannon’s body. At the end of the book, she discusses gender reassignment surgery. She says she thinks it’s an acceptable topic of discussion for the interview as she’s included in her book, however, some trans people think it’s unacceptable and it reduces them to their genitalia. Unfortunately, the interviewer states that it was the one thing he wanted to know and bemoans the fact he had to wait until the end of the book to discover the answer. Rhyannon turns the discussion back to her experience and thoughts. She says the NHS offered her surgery but it made her wonder whether the decision was about her or whether it was about what society expects her to look like. ‘My womanhood was for me to define; I don’t think having a vaginoplasty makes me a woman.’ She says she fell for an idea of completeness and that it’s not about the physical, it’s about the mental. Something for many of us to think about.

Daisy Buchanan talks to Cathy Rentzenbrink about her latest book, How to Be a Grown Up. It’s aimed at 20-somethings, although I’m pretty certain I could still do with some help at 39.

Daisy describes her 20s as ‘difficult’ consisting of crap boyfriends, dreadful jobs and hangovers. At 27, she went freelance and met someone lovely and now at 29, she feels that some things have fallen into place. She’s still poor at managing money though, she reveals. She’s fantasised about there being an adult auditor and says she wanted to write a book you could pull off the shelf at 3am and feel that you could find some help and support.

She talks about the jobs she had before she went freelance. At 22, she was a Mortgage PR, ‘It wasn’t for me’. She says there are parallels between jobs and relationships in the sense that you decided you’d quite like to be a particular type of person so you force yourself into things. She says ‘Be yourself’ is crap advice; ‘You don’t know, when you’re 22, who you are.’

The discussion turns to social media, of which Daisy says she’s a big fan. It’s where she met her husband and is an easy way of continuing friendships. However, she says it used to be a mix between a house party, a bar and a coffee morning and you could wander away. You can’t do that as much anymore. She comments that it’s difficult to have boundaries on social media, it creates a false sense of intimacy.

Cathy asks about sex and masturbation as it’s a topic Daisy’s written on regularly as well as there being a section in the book on it. Daisy says she has a fear and fascination of it. She was raised as a Catholic which meant that going to hell was a greater fear than getting pregnant but getting pregnant meant there’d be evidence of your sins. ‘We demonise women wanting to have agency over their own bodies.’

Daisy’s mother wrote to her school so she wasn’t allowed to take part in sex ed. Her writing about sex openly is Daisy’s way of covering what she wishes she’d know. She says we’re so quick to demonise porn that we’re not learning from it and how it can lead to expectations and male entitlement. They’ve grown up in a world that says this is okay. She says there needs to be a sexual revolution around pleasure, comfort and desire and there needs to be a language for women to express this.

Sunday begins with Ayisha Malik, author of Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged and The Other Half of Happiness. She talks about conceiving Sofia Khan as a Muslim version of Bridget Jones. She was Muslim dating at the time and had stories which her friends convinced her to write. ‘I never read about Muslim characters who aren’t oppressed,’ she says, ‘I just wanted her to be a normal human being’.

She uses humour because, she says, any situation that arises to do with racism, if you meet it with humour, it reduces it and the person doing it. It’s also an antidote to identity politics. On the reaction to the books, she comments, ‘I’ve not had a fatwa out against me, which is great.’

Khan talks about not wanting to be confined to writing one kind of book. She states her inspirations as Jane Austen, Nora Ephron, Anne Enright and Ruth Ozeki. The novel she’s working on at the moment is about a man trying to fulfil his mum’s dying wish by building a mosque in a West Dorset village. She links the idea to recent bombings saying, ‘When the perpetrator claims to share your faith that has a profound effect on you. Why should I always have to defend my beliefs?’ She says being a Muslim woman has made her ‘grittier’ and describes Muslim women as ‘Unashamed of our multiple identities. We’re multifaceted’.

She says she was honoured to be asked to ghost write Nadia Hussein’s novels (the second has recently been completed), although it ‘might be because I’m the only hijabi Muslim in publishing right now’. She describes the process as ‘a very different kind of writing. It’s quite prescriptive; the ideas are very much hers. I take myself completely out of it. I think that’s part and parcel of the process’. She agreed to do it because the publishers were transparent that it was Malik doing the writing.

The final event of the festival is one designed to help our mental health. Rachel Kelly is a former reporter for The Times and the author of Walking on Sunshine. She begins the event by asking us to stand if we or a member of our family has ever experienced a form of mental illness. If there’s anyone left seated, I can’t see them. She then asks us to remain standing if we’ve felt we could speak openly about it. Around 50% of the audience sits down. Kelly says she hopes she can contribute to changing that stigma.

Kelly tells her story: in 1997, she was working at The Times and had two small children. One night she couldn’t sleep. Her heartrate speeded up, she felt sick. She gripped the bed because she felt as though she was falling. She started to think that if she couldn’t get to sleep, she wouldn’t be able to go to work. If she couldn’t go to work, she wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage which would result in her losing the house and then her children. She was ruminating and catastrophising. She didn’t sleep for a further two nights. On the third night, she assumed she was having a heart attack and went to A&E. At the hospital she saw a psychiatrist who told Kelly her fight or flight response had become chronic.

She tells us that mental illness happens in a context and you can alter that context. (I think that’s too simplistic a response which doesn’t take structural factors into account.) However, Kelly didn’t change anything in her life except for taking the medication she was prescribed for a period of time.

In 2007, she became ill for a second time. This lasted for two years. This time around she became aware there was a pattern emerging and that if a form of mental illness occurs once it’s more likely to occur again. She changed her lifestyle.

The rest of the event consists of Kelly giving us some ideas as to how we can help ourselves. She begins with a breathing exercise during which we close our eyes and she talks to us about focusing on our breathing and our bodies. The reason for this is that we can only breathe in the present; it helps slow the sensation of time down. If you’re physically relaxed, your mentally relaxed, she says.

Kelly goes on to tell us some jokes about cheese – for example, Which kind of cheese do you use to disguise a small horse? Mascarpone – because laughter is good for us. She also recommends exercise and happy foods, which she says are oily fish, dark green leafy vegetables and dark chocolate. She tells us she’s providing us with a toolkit and knows that not all of her suggestions will work for everyone.

The final two things she mentions are the ones that appeal to me the most: first, we have to do an active listening exercise in which we tell someone we’ve never met before three things we’re grateful for and then they do the same. The idea is that we focus on the good things in our lives but, to be honest, I’m more interested in the other person’s story and we have a good chat about our lives. It’s a nice reminder that I like meeting new people and finding out about them. The second is about the idea of Flow as documented by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I haven’t thought about this in years (there was a point when it was trendy to discuss it in relation to teaching and learning) even though I know I love it when I’m in a state of flow reading a book or playing music. Kelly says that she learns poems off by heart and proves it by performing Love by George Herbert for us. I think about how much time I spend on social media and vow to book myself some long promised piano lessons when I get home.

Then it’s all over bar the long journey home for me. Jersey Festival of Words 2017 was bigger and more interesting than ever. I’m already looking forward to 2018.

In the Media, January 2017

In the media is a fortnightly round-up of features written by, about or containing female writers that have appeared during the previous fortnight and I think are insightful, interesting and/or thought provoking. Linking to them is not necessarily a sign that I agree with everything that’s said but it’s definitely an indication that they’ve made me think. I’m using the term ‘media’ to include social media, so links to blog posts as well as as traditional media are likely and the categories used are a guide, not definitives.

Image by Abigail Grey Swartz

Where is there to start other than with articles about the new American regime?

On the Women’s March:

• Paula Akpan, ‘Women’s March and the Selective Memory of Mainstream Feminism‘ on Galdem
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘When You Brag That The Women’s Marches Were Nonviolent‘ on The Establishment
• Ashley Weatherford, ‘What Does It Take to Make You March?‘ on The Cut
• Kara Brown, ‘I Want to Trust the Women’s Marchers‘ on Jezebel
• Stephanie Boland, ‘What will happen to women’s rights now that Donald Trump is President?‘ in The New Statesman
• Zoë Beaty, ‘Why are we still so surprised when men stand up for women’s rights?‘ on The Pool
• Josephine Livingstone, ‘The Problem With “Pussy”‘ on New Republic
• Janet Mock’s Speech on The Cut
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘How Susanna and Piers came to represent reason versus populism‘ on The Pool
• Sady Doyle, ‘The March Was Flawed and Messy and Glorious‘ in Elle
• Ann Friedman, ‘Was This Your First March? Don’t Stop Now.‘ on The Cut
• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Future of the Left Is Female‘ on The Cut
• Bim Adewunmi, ‘The Road Women Marched On This Weekend Was Paved By Black Resistance‘ on Buzzfeed
• Vonny Moyes, ‘Why do we still march, you ask? Because there’s still work to do‘ in The National
• Zoe Williams, ‘Memo to Piers Morgan: Why do we march? It’s not just protest, it’s about love‘ in The Guardian
• Jia Tolentino, ‘The Radical Possibility of The Women’s March‘ in The New Yorker
• Angela Davis’ Speech on Elle
• Megan Garber, ‘The Inauguration, and the Counter-Inauguration‘ on The Atlantic
• Eve Ensler, ‘The Women’s March heralds a renaissance of resistance‘ in The Guardian
• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Complicated, Controversial, Historic, Inspiring Women’s March‘ in The Cut
• Poorna Bell, ‘As A Woman Of Colour, This Is What Women’s March London Means To Me‘ on Huffington Post
• Lauren Elkin, ‘When women march, they are seen. And they are heard‘ on The Pool
• Heidi Mitchell, ‘I’m Anti-Trump, But I Refuse to March‘ in The Cut
• Ann Friedman, ‘A March Can Change Your Life‘ in The Cut
• Linda Sarsour, ‘#WhyIMarch‘ on Women’s Media Centre

On Melania:

• Megan Garber, ‘On Pitying Melania‘ on The Atlantic
• Jess Zimmerman, ‘Compassion for Melania Is Misguided — But It Isn’t Wrong‘ on The Cut
• Roxana Robinson, ‘Donald Trump: Making the Word ‘Pussy’ Great Again, Bigly‘ on Literary Hub
• Marisa Bate, ‘Should we feel sorry for Melania Trump?‘ on The Pool

On American society under Trump:

• Camille Dungy, ‘Unwelcome in My Country, Unwelcome in My Church‘ on Literary Hub
• Mehrsa Baradaran, ‘I Was a “Terrorist Country” Refugee Who’d Grown Up Shouting “Death to America.” America Trusted Me Anyway.‘ on Slate
• Andrea Pitzer, ‘What We Get Wrong About Hannah Arendt‘ on Longreads
• Lee Matalone, ‘R.I.P. #8: Inauguration Day‘ on The Rumpus
• Rebecca Traister, ‘Fake News, Fake Science and Why Doctors Lie About Abortion‘ on The Cut
• Tyrese Coleman, ‘How I Lost My Hometown‘ on Catapult
• Marilynne Robinson, ‘With President Trump, American democracy faces its greatest test‘ in The Guardian
• Yaa Gyasi, ‘Why the next four years will be a test for all of us‘ in The Guardian
• Katie MacBride, ‘Why Today Feels Like Grieving The Loss Of A Loved One‘ on The Establishment
• Lisa Ko, ‘20 Lessons on How to Be American‘ on The Offing
• June Eric-Udorie, ‘Nobody can inspire like Michelle Obama can inspire‘ on The Pool
• Ann Patchett, ‘Barack Obama, Our President of Love‘ in Time
• Alana Semuels, ‘Do Regulations Really Kill Jobs?‘ on The Atlantic
• Kathryn VanArendonk, ‘Why You Should Watch Donald Trump’s Inauguration‘ on Vulture
• Allison Robicelli, ‘I Work in the Restaurant Industry. Obamacare Saved My Family’s Life.‘ on Eater
• Sady Doyle, ‘It’s Time to Take Sexism Seriously as a Political Force‘ in Elle
• Emily Ladau, ‘I’m A Disabled Woman Who’s NOT Celebrating Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes Speech‘ on The Establishment
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Meryl Streep’s anti-Trump speech is brave and brilliant in the face of intimidation ‘ on The Pool
• Rebecca Traister, ‘WARNING: Abortion’s Deadly DIY Past Could Soon Become Its Future‘ in The Cut

On Trump:

• Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, ‘Like any woman working with a misogynist, Theresa May should call out Donald Trump’s sexism‘ in The New Statesman
• Adrienne Lafrance, ‘Calling Out a Presidential Lie‘ in The Atlantic
• Laurie Penny, ‘Searching for Time-Travelers on the Eve of the Trump Inauguration‘ on Pacific Standard
• Olga Kazan, ‘How to Overcome Political Irrationality About Facts‘ on The Atlantic
• Ruby Lott-Lavigna, ‘What does it mean for a leader when their entire country’s music culture rejects them?‘ in The New Statesman
• Jill Abramson, ‘‘Alternative facts’ are just lies, whatever Kellyanne Conway claims‘ in The Guardian
• Robin Wright, ‘Trump’s Vainglorious Affront to the C.I.A.‘ in The New Yorker
• Molly Crabapple, ‘Trump’s here. We have four years to write a better story‘ in The Guardian
• Helen Lewis, ‘Stop saying identity politics caused Trump‘ in The New Statesman
• Sara Nović, ‘Rhyme & Reason: Sign Language’s Anti-Authoritarian Streak‘ in Blunderbuss
• Molly Ball, ‘Welcome to the Trump Presidency‘ on The Atlantic
• Mona Eltahawy, ‘Welcome to a new era of politically sanctioned patriarchy‘ in The Guardian
• Sabine Heinlein, ‘A Prisoner’s View of the Trump Administration‘ on Literary Hub
• Amanda Hess, ‘Trump, Twitter and the Art of His Deal‘ in The New York Times
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘From Lying to Leering‘ in The LRB
• Dani Garavelli, ‘May caught in Trump’s post-truth trap‘ in The Scotsman

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Roxane Gay, ‘On Empathy, Race, and the Work of Alice Childress‘ on Literary Hub
• Sarah Perry, ‘‘I was weak, despairing, confused’: did writing a novel make me ill?‘ in The Guardian
• Sheila Kohler, ‘After losing my sister to a violent death, I turned to the solace of writing‘ on The Pool
• Lyz Lenz, ‘Taking a Stand with Roxane‘ on The Rumpus
• Julie Scelfo, ‘How Clara Hale and Audre Lorde Helped to Make New York‘ on Literary Hub
• Mariah Stovall, ‘On Falling Out of Love with Punk (and in Love with Books)‘ on Literary Hub
• Manjula Martin, ‘Against Fame: On Publishing, Popularity, and Ambition‘ on Catapult
• Melissa Febos, ‘The Heart-Work: Writing About Trauma as a Subversive Act‘ on Poets & Writers
• Adelia Saunders, ‘The Power and Politics of Language, from Oppressor to Oppressed‘ on Literary Hub
• Ottessa Moshfegh, ‘Finding Meaning in Going Nowhere‘ on The Atlantic
• Amanda Coe, ‘The Body in the Frame‘ on Huffington Post
• Sarah Hughes, ‘People, the final frontier: how sci-fi is taking on the human condition‘ in The Guardian
• ‘Meet the new faces of fiction for 2017‘ in The Guardian
• Clare Thorp, ‘Why we still need bookshops – in 2017 and always‘ on The Pool
• Diana Athill,’on Molly Keane: ‘I admired many authors. But Molly, I loved’‘ in The Guardian
• Janine Mikosza, ‘How Not to Speak Polish: On Language, Pain and (Not) Writing Memoir‘ on Electric Literature
• Christina Sharpe, ‘The Weather‘ on The New Enquiry
• Teow Lim Goh, ‘Tenacity, the Key to the Writing Life‘ on Literary Hub
• Danuta Keen, ‘The Da Vinci Code code: what’s the formula for a bestselling book?‘ in The Guardian
• Samantha Ellis, ‘How sibling rivalry made Anne the ‘neglected’ Brontë‘ on Penguin
• Anna Mazzola, ‘Bad Women: Do We Still Demonise Female Offenders?‘ on The Platform
• Emma Flint, ‘What makes the ‘perfect’ murder?‘ on PanMacmillan
• Alana Massey, ‘The Unbearable Niceness of Being‘ on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Day, ‘Reading about nature is pure comfort when the world is full of chaos‘ on The Pool
• Emily Temple, ‘A Brief Survey of the Great American Novel(s)‘ on Literary Hub
• Lucy Worsley, ‘Jane Austen at 200: still a friend and a stranger‘ in The Guardian
• Tessa Hadley, ‘Some of my best ideas come in the bath’ in The Guardian
• Joanne Harris, ‘On Ghostwriting, Celebrity and That Guardian Review.‘ on her blog
• Susanna Rustin, ‘Winifred Holtby: author, feminist, campaigner‘ in The Guardian
• Katherine Arden, ‘on the landscape that inspired The Bear and the Nightingale‘ on Penguin
• Cathy Rentzenbrink, ‘Reading Lives‘ on International Literature Showcase
• Ruth Graham, ‘Why This Norwegian Novelist Should Be the Next Elena Ferrante‘ on Slate
• Eimear McBride, ‘The problems with erotica‘ in The New Statesman
• Samantha Ellis, ‘The Brontës’ very real and raw Irish roots‘ in The Irish Times
• Samantha Ellis, ‘The Brontës and Hester Chapone‘ on Brontë Blog
• Min Jin Lee, ‘On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years‘ on Literary Hub
• Fiona Macdonald, ‘The Racy Side of Jane Austen‘ on The BBC
• Katherine Cowdrey, ‘Khorsandi withdrew from Jhalak Prize for fear of ‘alienating’ audience‘ in The Bookseller
• Noo Saro-Wiwa, ‘Playboy cars and pentecostal stars‘ in The TLS
• Emma Geen, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of ‘Being an Author’‘ on her blog
• Samantha Ellis, ‘Where are all the heroine mothers in fiction?‘ on The Pool
• Emily Gould, ‘Most Women In Publishing Don’t Have The Luxury Of Being Unlikable‘ on Buzzfeed

Personal essays/memoir:

• Evelyn Hampton, ‘Weightlessness‘ on Catapult
• Susan C. Ryan, ‘A Disaster Not to Be Found: On Survival (and Ultrasounds)‘ on Catapult
• Linda Chavers, ‘Fluids‘ on The Rumpus
• Porochista Khakpour, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Debut Novelist‘ on Literary Hub
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘The pros and cons of growing up in a Naked House‘ in The Pool
• Jennifer Maritza McCauley, ‘But There Is Also Rosa‘ on Passages North
• Enuma Okoro, ‘This is your morning‘ on Aeon
• D.M. Moehrle, ‘Womanly Arts‘ on The Rumpus
• Leia Menlove, ‘Drowning Little Things‘ on Catapult
• Zara Rahmen, ‘Close Calls‘ on Real Life
• Anjali Enjeti, ‘Drinking Chai to Savannah: Reflections on Identity, Inclusion and Power in the South‘ on Longreads
• Hermoine Holby, ‘rediscovering 60s ye-ye icon françoise hardy in the 90s‘ in i-D
• Noël Duan, ‘Beauty Shopping With My Mother, a Former Cultural Revolution Red Guard‘ on Racked
• Jody Allard, ‘Why I’ve Given Up On Being Healthy‘ on Buzzfeed
• Monica Uszerowicz, ‘Survivor Syndrome; or, Snacking While Jewish‘ on Avidly
• Angela Chen, ‘Why I No Longer Make Predictions‘ on Catapult
• Robyn Wilder, ‘My husband is the better parent – and it rankles‘ on The Pool
• Alice Jolly, ‘Donor siblings: do the ties of blood matter?‘ in The Guardian
• Lauren Alwan, ‘Arab Past, American Present: My Family’s Invisible History‘ on Catapult
• Laura Michele Diener, ‘Late Afternoon with Shadows Lengthening‘ on Numéro Cinq
• Laurie Frankel, ‘How do grandparents respond when their grandson becomes a granddaughter?‘ on The Pool
• Kathleen Alcott, ‘‘Restaurants have taught me who I am’‘ in The Guardian
• Charlotte Shane, ‘When Desire Goes Dark‘ on Hazlitt
• Nicky Loomis, ‘Pinecone Man‘ on Catapult
• D.S. ‘On Faith and Sexuality‘ on Dardishi
• Jamila Osman, ‘A Map of Lost Things: On Family, Grief, and the Meaning of Home‘ on Catapult
• Alexandra Heminsley, ‘The emotional challenges of IVF, and how one woman found solace in the sea‘ on The Pool
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, ‘The Woman Scared of Her Own Kimono‘ on Catapult
• Laura Goode, ‘Against Confession: On Intersectional Feminism, Radical Catholicism, and Redefining Remorse‘ on Longreads
• Isabel Hardman, ‘When my mind stopped working, I realised just how badly we treat mental health‘ in The Telegraph
• Anne Helen Peterson, ‘Living In The Beautiful Bubble Of The Not-Quite Internet‘ on Buzzfeed
• Alexandra Heminsley, ‘My swimming odyssey: ‘It felt like a last chance to prove what I was capable of’‘ in The Guardian

Feminism:

• Jessye McGarry, ‘Why I’m Waiting for The Right Man to Tell Me I Should Read ‘Infinite Jest’‘ on Reductress
• Diane Shipley, ‘The sexist reality of being a woman with M.E.‘ on The Pool
• Moira Weigel, ‘How Ultrasound Became Political‘ on The Atlantic
• J.C. Pan, ‘Love’s Labor Earned‘ on Dissent
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘Older motherhood offers women the ultimate in having it all‘ in The Guardian
• Rachel Monroe, ‘Sexual Assault in the Amazon‘ in The Cut
• Jen Palmares Meadows, ‘We Be Bleeding‘ on The Rumpus
• Sophie Wilkinson, ‘These Women Were all Prescribed the Pill – None of Them Needed it for Contraception‘ on The Debrief
• Clare Vaye Watkins, ‘A Trip of One’s Own‘ in New Republic
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘Media mockery of sex workers creates dangerous conditions for women‘ on The Pool
• Daisy Buchanan, ‘Casey Affleck’s Golden Globes win shows Hollywood’s double standard in action‘ on The Pool
• Meena Kandasamy, ‘Bengaluru attacks: Misogyny by night and day‘ on Aljazeera
• Lucy Rycroft-Swift, ‘I wore men’s clothes for a month – and it changed my life‘ on The F Word
• Connie Kuhns, ‘Strange Women‘ on Geist

Society and Politics:

• Kathryn Hughes, ‘Embarrassing bodies: what did the Victorians have to hide?‘ in The Guardian
• Amelia Tait, ‘The myth of Generation Snowflake: how did “sensitive” become a dirty word?‘ in The New Statesman
• Michele Kirsch, ‘My life as a cleaner in London‘ in The Independent
• Julie Beck, ‘Does Corruption Happen Slowly, or All at Once?‘ on The Atlantic
• Tahmina Begum, ‘You Talk Like a White Girl‘ on gal-dem
• Amelia Tait, ‘The best days of the internet are over – now our privacy will suffer‘ in The New Statesman
• Deafinitely Girly, ‘Deaf Girly and the Gap advert‘ on her blog
• Ruby Tandoh, ‘Bad fad – on how clean eating turned toxic‘ in The Guardian
• Vanessa Hua, ‘You might be thinking of someone else?‘ in The San Francisco Chronicle
• Ijeoma Oluo, ‘The Exploitation Of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy By White Supremacy‘ on The Establishment
• L.A. Kauffman, ‘In 1971, the People Didn’t Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down‘ on Longreads
• Brooke Jarvis, ‘Who Decides Who Counts as Native American?‘ in The New York Times
• Clare Chambers, ‘Time to abandon marriage?‘ in The TLS
• Jennifer Young, ‘Peetskill Blues‘ on Hazlitt
• Toni Jensen, ‘Women in the Fracklands: On Water, Land, Bodies, and Standing Rock‘ on Catapult
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘In Search of Black Atlantis‘ on Hazlitt
• Melinda Wenner Moyer, ‘A bug for Alzheimer’s?‘ on Aeon
• Carly Silver, ‘How Ancient Cure-Alls Paved the Way for Drug Regulation‘ on The Atlantic
• Laurie Shrage, ‘We need a contract for co-parenting, not just for marriage‘ on Aeon
• Rachel Aviv, ‘How Albert Woodfox Survived Solitary‘ in The New Yorker
• Jo Marchant, ‘This 3,500-Year-Old Greek Tomb Upended What We Thought We Knew About the Roots of Western Civilization‘ on Smithsonian
• Kathleen Hale, ‘Murder on Union Hill Road‘ on Hazlitt

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Emily Yahr, ‘From guilty pleasure to Emmy Awards: The delightfully weird history of Lifetime movies‘ in The Washington Post
• Victoria Coren Mitchell, ‘I’m so glad to spoil this film for you‘ in The Guardian
• Frances Katz, ‘Is Your TV Turned On? True Stories from the Cable Trenches‘ on Catapult
• Limara Salt, ‘Why are interracial relationships so rare in film?‘ on The Pool
• Helena Fitzgerald, ‘Bruce Springsteen: The Ultimate Dad‘ on The Catapult

The interviews/profiles:

• Alexandra Kleeman on Bookanista in The Guardian
• Janie Chang and Shilpi Gowda on Literary Hub
• Cat Marnell in The Cut
• Roxane Gay in The New York Times and Vogue 
• Sarah Pinborough in The Bookseller
• Joyce Carol Oates in The TLS
• Elizabeth Hand on Literary Hub
• Anne Applebaum on Spiegel
• Vic James on Reader Dad
• Yaa Gyasi in The Bookseller and The Guardian
• Claudia Rankine in The New Yorker
• Fiona Melrose on The Writes of Woman
• Kathleen Rooney on Literary Hub
• Mary Miller on Electric Literature
• Ayelet Waldman in The New York Times
• Bernadine Evaristo on the British Council
• Katherine Rooney on Electric Literature
• Erica Ferencik on Electric Literature
• Tara Betts on The Rumpus
• Ottessa Moshfegh on The Fanzine
• Elif Batuman in The New Yorker
• Xiaolu Guo in The Guardian
• Lucy Jane Bledsoe on The Rumpus
• Emma Flint on Foyles and in The Bookseller
• Deborah Lipstadt in The Guardian
• Mary Karr on Lenny
• Jo Mazelis on Alephi
• Jhumpa Lahiri on Medium
• Lindsey Lee Johnson on Electric Literature

The regular columnists:

• Laurie Penny in The New Statesman
• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent
• Caitlin Moran in The Times
• Lauren Laverne in The Pool
• Ella Risbridger in The Pool
• Sali Hughes in The Pool
• Bim Adewunmi in The Guardian
• Sophie Heawood in The Guardian
• Eva Wiseman in The Observer
• Tracey Thorn in The New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman and Maya Goodfellow on Media Diversified
• Josie Pickens on Ebony
• Bridget Christie in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer on Publishing for Humans
• Juno Dawson in Glamour
• Kashana Cauley on Catapult
• Louise O’Neill in the Irish Examiner
• Jendella Benson on Media Diversified
• Lola Okolosie in The Guardian
• Sarah Gerard, ‘Mouthful‘ on Hazlitt
• Books by Women We’d Love to See in English on Literary Hub

Jersey Festival of Words: The Non-Fiction

I tweeted on Saturday afternoon that one of the things I love about Jersey Festival of Words is the number of non-fiction writers who also happen to be female who are hosted by the festival. In 2015, I saw Rachel Bridge, Irma Kurtz, Ella Berthoud, Jane Hawking and Dr Gilly Carr. This year, it’s Anne Sebba, Cathy Retzenbrink, Kat Banyard and Sarah Turner aka The Unmumsy Mum.

Kat Banyard takes to the Opera House stage along with former sex worker Diane Martins on Saturday afternoon. They’ve come to discuss the ‘uncharted territory’ society finds itself in following the ‘huge and unprecedented expansion of the global sex trade’.

In her book Pimp State, Banyard discusses each area of the sex trade but for this event, he focuses solely on prostitution, looking at ideas around power, money, equality and policy choices. She states that ‘the global sex trade affects everyone’ as the trades weave themselves into the fabric of society. This promotes a message about the ways in which it’s acceptable to treat another human being.

Banyard reiterates much of the ground covered in the book with regards to sex buyers and their views; the women who become sex workers; those who control the trade, and the different legal stances, from legalisation to the Sex Buyer Law.

Diane Martins supports women exiting the sex trade and campaigns to end demand for sexual exploitation through implementation of the Sex Buyer Law. She tells us her story, which you can read here.

She has some interesting things to say about the work she does with women exiting the trade, in particular. She talks about the disassociation she felt and other women often feel from their bodies, ‘My vagina’s not attached to me by velcro’ and how powerful words are, ‘The power of words is so strong. You’re worth nothing. You’ll do as I say. This is what your life is’. But she hopes that her words can help impart hope and change ideas.

Both Martins and Banyard comment on the Home Affairs Select Committee they were asked to give evidence at with regards to prostitution laws. The committee was chaired by Keith Vaz, who was later revealed to be a sex buyer himself. Diane talks about how vulnerable some of the women who gave evidence were and how difficult revelations like this make it for them to talk about their experiences.

Banyard ends by saying that men take experiences of the sex industry into other areas of their life: work and home.

Photograph by Yasmin Hannah

On Saturday evening, the Opera House plays host to Sarah Turner aka The Unmumsy Mum, who’s interviewed by some blogger from the north of England. It’s difficult to talk about an event when you’re the person on stage asking the questions, but Turner’s fantastic: funny and honest. Her audience of 300 parents (mostly mums) roar with laughter as she talks about wanting to put the kids up on eBay, not having a kitchen with an island, the milking incident and What Would Ruth Do?

The two events everyone was talking about though, happened on Saturday morning at the same time – Michael Morpurgo in the Opera House and Cathy Rentzenbrink in the Arts Centre. Obviously, I was at the Arts Centre (although I did run the length of St Helier to get a signed copy of Morpurgo’s latest book for the ten-year-old).

Rentzenbrink’s interviewed by Paul Bisson, Vice Chairman of the festival. I mention this because Bisson’s first question is about interviewing as Rentzenbrink often interviews writers and chairs panels (she chaired both the thriller panel and the history panel at the festival this year). She says she’s become a better interviewer now she’s on the receiving end of it. She used to accidentally be a little bit casual, not wanting to gush over writers. Now she tells them if she loves their work. She also comments that not everyone who interviews you prepares and sometimes you realise twenty minutes into the interview…

Bisson says there’s an irony in her saying in The Last Act of Love that she didn’t want to be known as ‘coma girl’ and now she’s known for her memoir about it. She says there’s dealing with the thing and dealing with how to communicate the thing and she feels a great sense of relief now she’s on the record about what happened and who she is. ‘I’ve wrestled it into a book,’ she says. She jokes that if anything were to happen to her husband and she has to return to dating she can use the book as an introduction, ‘Read it and see if you can be bothered to take me on’.

How big Rentzenbrink’s book would be if it contained the whole truth.

She talks about the truth of the events, saying that ‘the written version becomes the true version’ and that although ‘there’s nothing in [the book] that’s not true’ there are omissions. These fall into two categories: people involved who didn’t want to be written about and things that were removed during the editorial process.

One of the reasons Rentzenbrink wrote the book was the misunderstandings around comas. She says they’re very clean on television, you either wake up or die. She quotes Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm, who says that it’s easy to save someone’s life with emergency brain surgery but that they’ll almost never recover. He uses the phrase, ‘The collateral damage to the family’. Rentzenbrink says that she used to think she was crazy and mad but has since realised she’s not, it’s the events that happened to her.

However, there are many moments in the book which are funny. ‘Tragedy is funny because if you couldn’t find funny you’d die on the spot,’ she says. She tells us that she got the giggles at Matty’s funeral because she thought his friends were going to drop the coffin in an Only Fools and Horses type moment.

She talks about living and working in the family pub. How people who drink in pubs are very funny but that measuring your drinking habits against them when you’re seventeen isn’t advisable. However, she credits the pub with preventing the family from the isolation they might have suffered on bringing Matty home if they’d been living in a house. She also comments on how many people seem to miss the class element of the book. ‘I love my journey from Snaith Ladies Darts Team at sixteen to the main stage at Cheltenham Literature Festival.’

On writing Rentzenbrink says, ‘I think all of writing is about self-doubt management’. She mimics herself typing, squinting at the keyboard. She says it’s only in the editing she thinks about the reader but because of her work in prisons with men who don’t read well, she’s aware of a need to make books accessible for a wide audience. She wanted to take something complex and make it simple. While editing The Last Act of Love she became very aware of the lack of books on the subject of persistent vegetative states and pictured a builder who’d never read a book reading it. This led to her editing for clarity and deleting a whole thread about her response to a range of books. ‘That man does not need to read me twatting on about Julian Barnes.’

It’s so easy for memories to be overtaken by a decaying body, she says. Writing the book helped her to remember what Matty was really like. ‘I remember new things about him all the time. He feels completely real to me now in a way I thought I’d lost him. He sort of talks to me. It might be him, wouldn’t turn that down. I think it’s my memory having a conversation with itself.’ He’s encouraging, sweary and gives career advice. He’s fondly critical and calls Rentzenbrink to account with comments like, ‘What the fuck are you worrying about that for, you crazy bitch?’

There’s a theme of religion running through the book. Rentzenbrink describes herself as ‘a hopeful agnostic. I like a bit of smells and bells. I like married clergy, love being the answer and all’. She wonders why she doesn’t allow herself to go to church and thinks religion hasn’t caught up with medical developments. She was scared that religions people would be angry about the book and the decision her family took.

Rentzenbrink says that she considers herself a case study but doesn’t want to be a spokesperson for euthanasia. ‘Almost all of those arguments reduce the human.’ She says raising awareness is a great thing but, ‘I like the book to do that’. She says more cases have gone to court because of the book, people didn’t know it was an option.

She’s currently editing her second book, a non-fiction work called A Manual for Heartache which is about loss and grief more generally. She says if you remain silent people think you’re alright but when you’re honest, people say ‘me too’.

She’s also writing a novel. Doing so has liberated her from the need to tell the truth. She ends by saying that thinking about other people’s books, which she does for her Contributing Editor role at The Bookseller, ‘keeps me sane’.

Jersey Festival of Words 2016 Preview

Some of you might remember that last year I attended the inaugural Jersey Festival of Words. It was a fantastic few days: great events, lovely people and wonderful weather. You can read about the events I attended on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

This year the festival returns bigger and better and I’ll be flying out to Jersey on the 28th of September for what I anticipate will be a glorious long weekend.

If you fancy a long bookish weekend away at the end of summer, then I highly recommend a visit. The festival programme is here and includes a whole range of events from author interviews to workshops to reading groups to panel discussions.

If you can’t make it, then you’re in the right place as I’ll be covering the festival for the blog again this year. Not only that, throughout September I’ll be focusing on books by writers appearing at the festival including Victoria Hislop, Alison Weir, Caroline Lea, Tania Hershman, Erren Michaels, Antonia Hodgson, Rachel Abbott, Louise Doughty, Kat Banyard, Anne Sebba and Sarah Turner aka The Unmumsy Mum.

Cathy Rentzenbrink, whose memoir The Last Act of Love was one of my books of the year in 2015, is also appearing. She’s well worth seeing live – smart, thoughtful, honest and very funny. She gives great interview.

And, well, if you can only afford to go to one event…? I’ll be interviewing Sarah Turner, The Unmumsy Mum, on the Saturday evening in Jersey Opera House. We’d love to see you there.

In the Media, March 2016, part one

In the media is a fortnightly round-up of features written by, about or containing female writers that have appeared during the previous fortnight and I think are insightful, interesting and/or thought provoking. Linking to them is not necessarily a sign that I agree with everything that’s said but it’s definitely an indication that they’ve made me think. I’m using the term ‘media’ to include social media, so links to blog posts as well as traditional media are likely and the categories used are a guide, not definitives.

It’s Mothers’ Day in the UK today, so inevitably there’s been lots of writing about mothers – being one, having one, not having one – this week. Contributors including Jackie Kay, Jeanette Winterson and Helen Simpson wrote about ‘… my mother before I knew her‘ inspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Before You Were Mine’ in The Guardian; Liz Dashwood asks, ‘What do I *really* want for Mother’s Day?‘ on The Pool; Rivka Galchen talked about ‘The Only Thing I Envy Men‘ in The New Yorker; Robyn Wilder wrote, ‘Maternity leave: the reality versus the expectations‘, Emily Eades wrote, ‘Becoming a mother without your own mother to rely on‘ and Sinéad Gleeson wrote, ‘Mothers, and the pram-in-the-hall problem‘ all on The Pool (Do follow the link to the Anne Enright clip on that last piece. Spot on and very funny); Susan Briante wrote, ‘Mother Is Marxist‘ on Guernica; Kate Townshend asked, ‘Is it possible for a mother and daughter to be *too* close?‘, Samira Shackle said, ‘Returning to my mother’s homeland helped me to make sense of my place in the world‘, Cathy Rentzenbrink said, ‘There is no such thing as a smug mother, we’re all terrified and struggling‘ and Rosalind Powell wrote, ‘I didn’t give birth, but I became a mother‘ all on The Pool; Sarah Turner wrote, ‘Mother’s Day Without Mum‘ on The Unmumsy Mum

Sadly, Louise Rennison died this week. Philip Ardagh wrote, ‘My Hero: Louise Rennison‘ in The Guardian. Shannon Maughan wrote her obituary for Publishers Weekly.

The woman with the most coverage this fortnight is Sanjida Kay with ‘Where’s the Diversity in Grip-Lit?‘ on The Asian Writer; ‘on Switching Genres‘ on The Literary Sofa, and ‘Fairytales‘ on Women Writers, Women’s Books

Exciting news as forthcoming novels from Jilly Cooper, Zadie Smith and Ali Smith were announced this fortnight.

And I’ve added Kaushana Cauley’s new Intersections column for Catapult to the regulars list at the bottom of the links. It’s well worth a read.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Eve Ainsworth, ‘Toxic love: YA’s bad boys need to stay between the covers‘ in The Guardian
• Hanya Yanagihara: ‘Don’t we read fiction exactly to be upset?’ in The Guardian
• Jessie Burton, ‘Success, Creativity and the Anxious Space‘ on her blog
• Claire Fuller, ‘Some things I’ve learned in my year of being published‘ on her blog
• Bree Crowder, ‘Four Young Adult Authors Share Why They Write Funny Books‘ on Bustle
• Karen Swallow Prior, ‘Jane Eyre and the Invention of the Self‘ on The Atlantic
• Deborah Moggagh, ‘Man Booker Prize has an unhealthy effect on the market, says author Deborah Moggagh‘ in The Independent
• Claire Fallon, ‘Our Favourite Children’s Books Are Super Problematic‘ on the Huffington Post
• Alison Flood, ‘Tessa Hadley among nine winners of surprise $150,000 literary awards‘ in The Guardian
• Sian Cain, ‘Toni Morrison wins PEN/Saul Bellow award for contribution to American fiction‘ in The Guardian
• Jo Hall, ‘If We Can Imagine Dragons: On Writing Non-Heterosexual Relationships in Fantasy‘ on Holdfast
• Alison Stine, ‘On Poverty‘ on Kenyon Review
• Joan Schenkar, ‘What Patricia Highsmith did for love: ‘The Price of Salt’ and the secrets behind ‘Carol’‘ in the Los Angeles Times
• Louise Walters, ‘I didn’t want to resort to self-publishing, but it’s an exhilarating change‘ in The Guardian
• Gaby Wood, ‘How Karl Ove Knausgaard and Elena Ferrante won us over‘ in The Telegraph
• Moira Redmond, ‘Leap year fear: a literary history of women proposing marriage‘ in The Guardian
• Katy Derbyshire, ‘Women in Translation: Why Does It Matter?‘ on Free Word
• Eva Jurczyk, ‘No More Books by Men‘ on The Awl
• Elizabeth Strassner, ‘How To Tell If You’re In a Flannery O’Connor Story‘ in The Toast
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘How to Make Sure Your Writing Is Forgotten‘ on The Rumpus
• Holly Williams, ‘From The Roaring Queen to Downton Abbey: the afterlives of Virginia Woolf‘ in the New Statesman
• Anna North, ‘What Publishing a Novel Taught Me About Life‘ on Waterstones’ Blog

• Kate Jenkins, ‘Harper Lee and the Myth of a Post-Racial America‘ on Literary Hub
• Sian Cain, ‘Fear of Flying still soars above tabloid outrage‘ in The Guardian
• Brigit Katz, ‘These forgotten female crime writers had no time for femme fatales or dowdy housewives‘ on Women in the World
• Idra Novey, ‘Writing While Translating‘ on Literary Hub
• Elizabeth Minkel, ‘Teen readers aren’t in crisis, they’re just making their own rules‘ in The Guardian
• Jaya Saxena, ‘I Know I Should Like Reading More But There Are Things About The Act Of Reading That Make It Very Difficult‘ in The Toast
• Deirdre Sullivan, ‘The seed of Needlework was anger, and I wanted it to feel raw’ in The Irish Times
• Jesmyn Ward remembers Harper Lee: ‘She saw and responded to the humanity of each and every one of us’ on Entertainment Weekly
• Vipash Bansal, ‘Remembering Octavia Butler: 1947-2006‘ on Media Diversified
• Chris Power, ‘A brief survey of the short story: Elizabeth Taylor‘ in The Guardian
• Brooke Magnanti, ‘Where are the normal women in fiction?‘ on One Book Lane
• Robin Stevens, ‘Boys could enjoy stories about girls, and vice versa – if only we’d let them‘ in The Guardian
• Chelsea G. Summers, ‘A History of Horny‘ on Hazlitt
• Brit Mandello, ‘Dear Joanna Russ: A Letter for an Inimitable Writer‘ on Tor.Com
• Sunny Singh, ‘Why set up a prize for writers of colour?‘ in The Bookseller
• Rory Samantha Green, ‘Born Lucky: my mum Jackie Collins and her wild child alter ego‘ in The Guardian
• Laura Barnett, ‘Finding ideas isn’t usually a problem‘ in The Guardian
• Joanna Cannon, ‘Mental illness is always a problem, so we will always need books about it‘ in The Guardian
• Jonathan Sturgeon, ‘The Paradoxical Legacy of Harper Lee‘ on Flavorwire
• Tricia Tongco, ‘Meet Faith, The Body-Positive Superhero Of Our Dreams‘ on the Huffington Post
• Melissa Harrison, ‘How cars ruined our love of the countryside‘ in The Guardian
• Shelley Harris, ‘The Secret Life of Mothers‘ on the WHSmith Blog
• Morgan Jerkins, ‘Black Women Writers and the Secret Space of Diaries‘ in The New Yorker

 

Personal essays/memoir:

• Esther Wang, ‘Watching And Reading About White People Having Sex Is My Escape‘ on Buzzfeed
• Megan Galbraith, ‘Sin Will Find You Out‘ on Catapult
• Georgina Kleege, ‘On Being Who I Am: My Life as a Tall Blind Woman‘ in The Toast
• Briallen Hopper, ‘Relying on Friendship in a World Made for Couples‘ in The Cut
• Sarah Resnick, ‘H‘ on n+1
• Rosalind Jana, ‘The One Piece Of Clothing That Makes Me Feel Extraordinarily Sexy‘ on Refinery 29
• Alana Massey, ‘Why I’m Buying a House Without a Family to Put in It‘ on The Cut
• Anna Holmes, ‘I Feel Destined to Be Single, and That’s Okay‘ on The Cut
• Kade Walker, ‘Veronica Dies in Jamaica‘ on The Rumpus
• Ellen Urbani, ‘There Is No Such Thing as a True Story‘ on The Rumpus

Feminism:

• Rebecca Traister, ‘The Single American Woman‘ in The Cut
• Aria Dean, ‘Closing the Loop‘ on The New Inquiry
• Eleanor Ross, ‘Why estate agent sexism could be costing you‘ on The Pool
• Gaby Hinsliff, ‘It’s the £30bn cut you’ve never heard of. And women are bearing the brunt‘ in The Guardian
• Ann Friedman, ‘So You’re a Celebrity Who Calls Yourself a Feminist. Now What?‘ in The Cut
• Linda Chavers, ‘To Black Girls Everywhere‘ on The Offing
• Caroline Paul, ‘Why Do We Teach Girls That It’s Cute to Be Scared?‘ in The New York Times

Society and Politics:

• Caitlin Moran, ‘How to start – and win – an argument online‘ in The Guardian
• Hadley Freeman, ‘So the privately educated are the new underclass? Spare me the sob story‘ in The Guardian
• Chimene Suleyman, ‘Trump has succeeded in an America that is already pre-disposed to racial suspicion‘ on Media Diversified
• Sarah Churchwell, ‘Hillary Clinton’s haters and the glass ceiling of American politics‘ in the New Statesman
• Molly Crabapple, ‘What Life Is Like Inside the Besieged, War-Torn Syrian City of Aleppo‘ on Vice
• Julia Lee, ‘When People of Color Are Discouraged From Going Into the Arts‘ in The Atlantic
• Dorothy Cummings McLean, ‘Marriage Is an Accomplishment‘ on Quadrapheme
• Kate Spicer, ‘Does where you go to school affect your ability to succeed?‘ on The Pool
• Jamilah King, ‘How Black Women Like Me Reckon With America’s Political Process‘ on Mic

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Rachel Syme, ‘The Return to Predictability‘ on Complex
• Anna Leszkiewicz ‘The Ghostbusters trailer shows the new film is categorically not aimed at men‘ in the New Statesman
• Emma Brockes,  ‘Whether it’s Ali G or Tina Fey, ironic racism just isn’t funny any more‘ in The Guardian
• Venus Williams, ‘Why I’m Going Back to Indiana Wells‘ on The Players’ Tribune
• Joan Smith, ‘Now we know – the BBC’s macho culture protected predatory men for decades‘ in The Guardian
• Allison P. Davis, ‘Why Are White People Trying to Ruin ‘Formation’?‘ on The Cut
• Anohni, ‘Why I Am Not Attending the Academy Awards‘ on Pitchfork
• Gwynne Watkins, ‘Before #OscarsSoWhite: The Forgotten Story of Queer Nation’s 1992 Academy Awards Protest‘ on Yahoo
• Elisabeth Donnelly, ‘Boston Rules‘ on Hazlitt
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘Kesha: the musical equivalent of the drunk girl in the short dress‘ on The Pool
• Kiva Reardon, ‘Mainstream Creep: Keeping Feminist Film Criticism Subversive‘ on Hazlitt

The interviews:

• Han Kang in The White Review (translated by Deborah Smith)
• Louise O’Neill in Elle
• Helen Stephenson on The Pool
• Chinelo Okparanta on For Books’ Sake
• Tracy Chevalier in The Bookseller and The Telegraph
• Rachel B. Glaser on For Books’ Sake
• Molly Crabapple on Literary Hub
• Shelley Harris on The Writes of Woman and One Book Lane
• Kathleen Spivak on The Rumpus
• Rebecca Traister on Jezebel and Elle (with Roxane Gay)
• Mona Awad on Electric Literature
• Virginia Reeves on Literary Hub
• Jennifer Clement on Pen America
• Monica Wendel on Vida
• Sara Taylor in The Big Issue
• bell hooks (with Emma Watson) in Paper
• Ottessa Moshfegh in The Observer
• Emma Donoghue on Public Books
• Meg Rosoff on Bookanista
• Sarah Ruhl in The New York Times
• Sarah Bakewell on The Bookseller
• Marian Keyes in the Bath Chronicle
• Laura van den Berg and Emily St. John Mandel on the FSG blog
• Joyce Maynard on Literary Hub
• G. Willow Wilson on Black Nerd Problems
• Sharon Horgan on Creative Review
• Elizabeth Kadetsky on The Rumpus
• Lucy Kalanithi in Stylist
• Jacky Fleming on The Pool
• Petina Gappah on NPR
• Carol Tulloch in The Observer
• Caitlin Moran on The Debrief
• Deborah Smith on The Quietus

The regular columnists:

• Laurie Penny in The New Statesman
• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent
• Caitlin Moran in The Times
• Lauren Laverne in The Pool
• Ella Risbridger in The Pool
• Sali Hughes in The Pool
• Bim Adewunmi in The Guardian
• Sophie Heawood in The Guardian
• Eva Wiseman in The Observer
• Tracey Thorn in The New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman and Maya Goodfellow on Media Diversified
• Josie Pickens on Ebony
• Bridget Christie in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer on Publishing for Humans
• Juno Dawson in Glamour
• Kashana Cauley on Catapult

In the Media, February 2016, part two

In the media is a fortnightly round-up of features written by, about or containing female writers that have appeared during the previous fortnight and I think are insightful, interesting and/or thought provoking. Linking to them is not necessarily a sign that I agree with everything that’s said but it’s definitely an indication that they’ve made me think. I’m using the term ‘media’ to include social media, so links to blog posts as well as traditional media are likely and the categories used are a guide, not definitives.

On Friday, the death of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird was announced. Obituaries followed from Ed Pilkington and Matthew Teague in The Guardian; Eric Hamburger also in The Guardian; Casey N. Cep in The New Yorker, and The Irish Times, and appraisals of her work from Michiko Kakutani, ‘In Harper Lee’s Novels, a Loss of Innocence as Children and Again as Adults‘ in the New York Times; Sarah Churchwell, ‘Harper Lee: author battled to reconcile racial justice with a racially unjust society‘ and Elaine Showalter, ‘Harper Lee: an American novelist deserving of serious attention‘ both in The Guardian; Michelle Dean, ‘Did Go Set a Watchman spoil Harper Lee’s literary legacy?‘ in The Guardian; Katy Waldman, ‘What Is Harper Lee’s Legacy After Go Set a Watchman?‘ on Slate, and Alex Clark, ‘Why Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird endures to tell its tale of radical change‘ in The Observer

You might have heard that a fortnight ago Beyoncé released a new song ‘Formation’ which she went on to perform at the SuperBowl. Lots of people had lots to say about it. LaSha wrote, ‘Kendrick Lamar won’t face backlash like Beyoncé: Socially conscious art, sexual expression and the policing of black women’s politics‘, Priscilla Ward wrote, ‘White Beyoncé haters don’t get it: “Formation” isn’t “race-baiting” — but it is unapologetically about race‘ both on Salon; Banseka Kayembe wrote, ‘Beyonce Gets Political: Here’s Why it Matters‘ on the Huffington Post; Shantrelle Lewis wrote, ‘“Formation” Exploits New Orleans’ Trauma‘ on Slate; Nikita Richardson did ‘A Deep Dive into the Important, Unapologetic Blackness of Beyoncé’s ‘Formation’‘ on Hello Giggles; Suzanne Moore said, ‘Black Pride at the Super Bowl? Beyoncé embodies a new political moment‘ in The Guardian; The Pool asked, ‘Four women on what Beyoncé’s Formation means to them‘, and Anna Leszkiewicz said, ‘Beyoncé and #BlackLivesMatter: why “Formation” is her most radical release to date‘ in the New Statesman.

Last weekend was Valentine’s Day; there was plenty of writing around that too. Emma Dowling wrote, ‘Love’s Labour’s Cost: The Political Economy of Intimacy‘ on Verso Books; Eleanor Franzén wrote ‘V Daze‘ on Elle Thinks; Eileen Myles, ‘on the Excruciating Pain of Waiting for Love‘ and Heather Haverilesky, ‘What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage‘ on The Cut; Marie Phillips wrote, ‘What I learnt from a year of being in love‘ and Emer O’Toole shared, ‘The Rules, and how I fell in love‘ both on The Pool; Lauren Duca asked, ‘Is There Such a Thing As a Feminist Marriage Proposal?‘, Laura June revealed, ‘What I Thought Romance Meant, Age 12–Present‘ and Meaghan O’Connell told us, ‘Getting Married in One Week Was the Most Romantic Thing I Ever Did‘ all in The Cut; Emma Flowers wrote, ‘Finding, Nearly Losing and Finally Building Love Across Two Genders‘ on the Huffington Post; Heidi Julavits on ‘My High-School Boyfriend, the Con Artist‘ in The Cut; Tiffany Yannetta wrote, ‘Lights, Camera, Love‘ on the history of dating shows on Racked, and Alana Massey said, ‘Tinder Is the New Meet-Cute‘ in The Cut.

Congratulations to Ríona Judge McCormack who won the inaugural Galley Beggar Press short story competition with ‘Blackburn‘. And The Stella Prize announced its 12 book longlist for 2016.

The best of the rest:

On or about books/writers/language:

• Janet Ellis,‘I submitted my book under a pseudonym’ in The Telegraph
• Sarah Pinborough, ‘“The first outline was way more weird than the final novel” – on writing 13 Minutes‘ on One Book Lane
• Katherine Clements, ‘The Real Wicked Lady‘ on The History Girls
• Elen Caldecott, ‘Children’s books: a middle class ghetto?‘ in The Guardian
• Grady Hendrix, ‘Beloved: The Best Horror Novel the Horror Genre Has Never Claimed‘ on Tor.Com
• Laura Malonee, ‘The Subversive Women Who Self-Publish Novels Amid Jihadist War‘ on Wired
• Cathy Retzenbrink, ‘Lucy Kalanithi, a mourning wife on her husband’s brilliant legacy‘ on The Pool
• Susan Burton, ‘The Quietly Subversive Fictions of Dana Spiotta‘ in The New York Times
• Lisa Levy, ‘The Fine Grim Line Between Love and Stalking: On the Crime Fiction of Caroline Kepnes‘ on Literary Hub
• AFP, ‘Love, Rage, Silence: Secret Lives of Afghanistan’s Female Poets‘ in The Express Tribune
• Belinda McKeon, ‘The Night that Sylvia Plath Met Ted Hughes‘ on Literary Hub
• Edan Lepucki, ‘The Anxiety of Influence: Children’s Books and Their Grown-Up Counterparts‘ on The Millions
• Emily Harnett, ‘When Art Cannot Console Us In Death‘ on Literary Hub
• Anna Hope, ‘The inspiration for an asylum set on the Yorkshire Moors‘ on the Penguin blog
• Rosalind Harvey, ‘A Response to “Beyond Bolaño and Beyond”‘ on Full Stop
• Lisa McInerney, ‘Writers on Location: on Cork City‘ on The Literary Sofa
• Melissa Keil, ‘When is YA going to shape up to body diversity?‘ in The Guardian
• Maddie Crum ‘Some Books Just Aren’t Made To Be Adapted For The Screen, And That’s OK‘ on Huffington Post
• Gila Lyons ‘Female Friendships and Online Literary Sexism‘ on The Rumpus
• Polly Vernon, ‘All the attention came from women telling me how stupid my book was‘ in The Guardian
• Kathryn Evans, ‘How writing YA helped me make sense of my childhood‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Robert McCrum, ‘The 100 best nonfiction books: No 3 – No Logo by Naomi Klein (1999)‘ in The Guardian
• Tracy McVeigh, ‘Ferrante fever sees ‘dangerous’ Naples turn into a tourist hotspot‘ in The Observer
• Valerie Grove, ‘My hero: Margaret Forster‘ in The Guardian
• Sarah Crompton. ‘Girl, uninterrupted: staging Eimear McBride’s chaotic masterpiece‘ in The Guardian
• William Deresiewicz, ‘Where Have You Gone, Annie Dillard?‘ on The Atlantic
• Kavita Das, ‘On Parsing‘ on VIDA
• Emily Sipiora, ‘Françoise Sagan and Luxury Existentialism‘ in The Northwest Review of Books
• Katie Cotton, ‘Women in picture books: are we there yet?‘ on Scottish Book Trust
• Martin Chilton, ‘How Valley of the Dolls went from a reject to a 30-million best-seller‘ in The Telegraph
• Candy Gourlay and Laura Dockrill, ‘Why we love enchantment in children’s books‘ in The Guardian
• Daniel Peña, ‘Octavia Butler’s Notebook Represents All The Anxieties Of Writers Of Color‘ on Ploughshares
• Niina Pollari, ‘The Marvelous Bonfire‘ on Catapult
• Nandini Balial, ‘On Finding Yourself in the Work of Jhumpa Lahiri‘ on Literary Hub
• Siyanda Mohutsiwa, ‘I’m Done With African Immigrant Literature‘ on Okay Africa
• Andrew Harrison, ‘Framed! Meet the creators shaking up modern comics‘ in The Guardian
• Claire Armitstead, ‘Margaret Forster, award-winning author, dies at 77‘ in The Guardian
• Hannah Tennant-Moore, ‘The Best Literary Writing About Sex‘ on Literary Hub
• Catherine Nichols, ‘One Weird Trick That Makes a Novel Addictive‘ on Jezebel
• Eleanor Franzén, ‘On Culture: The Dark Side of Beatrix Potter‘ on Litro
• Máire T Robinson, ‘Sheela-na-gigs and writing what you don’t know‘ in The Irish Times
• Chibundu Onuzo, ‘Yes, I’m black. But an ethnic minority? Forget it‘ in The Guardian
• Anne Boyd Rioux, ‘Eight Classic Female Bildungsromane You Should Know About If You Don’t Already‘ in The Toast
• Esther Kuforiji, ‘Stories of Blackness — Chapter 4: Literary Festivals‘ on Medium
• Julia Eccleshare, ‘Gillian Avery obituary‘ in The Guardian

Personal essays/memoir:

• Liz Dashwood, ‘Grown-ups are allowed to have meltdowns, too‘ on The Pool
• Joyce Maynard, ‘What Luck Means Now‘ in The New York Times
• Erin Lee Carr, ‘Still Rendering‘ on Medium
• Danielle Bacher, ‘My Autistic Brother’s Quest for Love‘ in Esquire
• Bruna Dantas Labato, ‘Notes on Record-Keeping‘ on Ploughshares
• Joanna Horton, ‘Hard Luck: On Motherlessness‘ in The Toast
• Edan Lepuki, ‘The Secret, Magical Underwear That Only Moms Know About‘ in The Cut
• Kim Pittaway, ‘After‘ on Hazlitt
• Jennifer Hanks, ‘Somewhere Across The Sea‘ in Lumen
• Nicolette Loizou, ‘Travelling in Fiji‘ on Litro
• Esther Schor, ‘My Last JDate‘ in Tablet
• Antonia Honeywell, ‘I was driven out of my beloved church by homophobia‘ in The Telegraph
• Marian Keyes , ‘on the Agony of Small Goodbyes‘ on The Pool
• Susan Shapiro, ‘Both Sides Now‘ on Tablet
• Carmen Maria Machado, ‘The Moon Over the River Lethe‘ on Catapult
• Sarai Walker, ‘Yes, I’m Fat. It’s O.K. I Said It.‘ in The New York Times
• Miriam Foley, ‘Remembering Román‘ on Litro
• Susan Daitch, ‘Treasure Hunters‘ on Guernica
• Farah Róisín, ‘Why Them?‘ on Hazlitt

Feminism:

• Anna James, ‘What’s behind the lack of female pilots?‘ on The Pool
• Jia Tolentino, ‘What Should We Say About David Bowie and Lori Maddox?‘ on Jezebel
• Laura Munoz, ‘To Men I Love, About Men Who Scare Me‘ on Medium
• Dolly Alderton, ‘Hey, spurious polls. This is the *perfect* woman‘ on The Pool
• Emma Lindsay, ‘What I Learned From Dating Women Who Have Been Raped‘ on Medium
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘On the sad inevitability of the grown man and the teenage girl‘ on The Pool
• Caroline Criado-Perez, ‘Companies are to publish their gender pay gaps – but will this lead to financial equality?‘ on the New Statesman
• Louise O’Neill, ‘I wonder if my ex-boyfriends thought female sexuality was something to be laughed at‘ in the Irish Examiner
• Sandra Newman, ‘Woman Facts‘ on McSweeney’s
• Robyn Wilder, ‘Why is the P-word so cringingly awful?‘ on The Pool
• Rebecca Solnit, ‘The Case of the Missing Perpetrator‘ on Literary Hub
• Sophie Mayer, ‘The Legend of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp‘ on Berfrois
• Sady Doyle, ‘Progressive‘ on her Tumblr
• Aricka Foreman and Mimi Wong, ‘Except, All Of Us: Women & the Myth of Safety‘ on The Offing
• Laura June ‘When You’re Pregnant, Nothing Seems in Your Control‘ on The Cut

Society and Politics:

• Kyla Marshell, ‘The Other World Where Everyone Lives‘ in The Blueshift Journal
• Elspeth Reeve, ‘The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens‘ on New Republic
• Michelle Goldberg, ‘Is a Surrogate a Mother?‘ on Slate
• Alana Massey, ‘Checking Your Date’s Instagram Isn’t ‘Stalking,’ It’s Research‘ on The Cut
• Meena Kandasamy, ‘“I Am An Anti-National…Count Me Out”‘ on Outlook
• Aaminah Khan, ‘I Don’t Need White Progressives Telling Me, A Queer Muslim, About Homophobia In Islam‘ on Harlott
• Lisa Rab, ‘Poverty in Charlotte: ‘It Was Never Okay’‘ in Charlotte Magazine
• Beulah Maud Devaney, ‘Which Cities Would Be Most Likely to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse?‘ on City Metric
• Jihan Crowther ‘What Dating Abroad Taught Me About Stateside Racism‘ on Jezebel
• Jaya Saxena, ‘Some Unorganized Mixed Race Thoughts‘ in The Toast
• Lineal Ajello, ‘More and More War Stories‘ on Guernica
• Susan Gillman, ‘Remembering Slavery, Again‘ in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Eleanor Margolis, ‘The new young fogeys‘ in The New Statesman
• Emiko Jozuka, ‘The Woman Who Makes Prosthetic Pinkies for Ex-Yakuza Members‘ on Motherboard

Film, Television, Music, Art, Fashion and Sport:

• Joy Resmovits, ‘The UCLA gymnast who became a viral sensation by just being herself on the floor‘ in the LA Times
• Elizabeth Day, ‘Happy Valley’s women: flawed, funny and completely brilliant‘ on The Pool
• Elizabeth Sankey, ‘In praise of Ab Fab, female friendship and not caring what other people think‘ on The Pool
• Lorrie Moore, ‘The Shame of Wisconsin‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Caroline O’Donoghue, ‘Superheroes have to deal with the same problems the rest of us do‘ on The Pool
• Alexandra Molotkow, ‘The Uncomfortable Power of Pop-Music Cruelty‘ on The Cut
• Hannah Giorgia, ‘Why Do Black Women In Movies Have To Choose Between A Weave And A Relationship?‘ on Buzzfeed
• Cali Hughes, ‘Red is so much more than a colour. It’s a state of mind.’ on the 4th Estate blog
• Lisa Owens, ‘Does Don’t Tell The Bride actually contain the secrets to a happy life?‘ on The Pool
• Lisa Hix, ‘Out of the Shadow of Aunt Jemima: The Real Black Chefs Who Taught Americans to Cook‘ on Collectors Weekly
• Jamie Lauren Keiles, ‘I’m a Hat Person Now‘ on The Cut

The interviews:

• Elizabeth Strout in The Guardian
• Kelly Link on The Millions
• Elena Ferrante in The Gentlewoman
• Idra Novey on Hazlitt, Electric Literature, Weird Sister and Literary Hub
• Janet Ellis in The Bookseller
• Hilary Spiers on Greenacre Writers
• Ann Neuman and Sheri Fink in Guernica
• Marie Annhearte Baker in Room
• Marjorie Liu in Guernica
• Jhumpa Lahiri on Slate, the Wall Street Journal and  Literary Hub, Parts One and Two
• Belinda McKeon on Electric Literature
• Lucy Kalanithi in The Guardian
• Sara Majka on Electric Literature
• Salena Godden on The Woven Tale Press
• Marina Warner on The Literateur
• Ann Goldstein on NPR
• Antonia Honeywell on Greenacre Writers
• Angela Flournoy on The Rumpus
• Sarah Perry on Radio Praha
• Meg Rosoff in The Guardian
• Han Kang on Literary Hub
• Joanna Walsh in Tank
• Alida Nugent on The Rumpus
• Natasha Wimmey on Broadly
• Caroline Bergvall on Asymptote
• Jo Bloom in Psychologies
• Elizabeth McKenzie on Literary Hub
• Sharon Guskin in The Bookseller
• Cate Kennedy on Paul McVeigh’s website
• Sara Gruen and Sarah McCoy on Salon
• Gillian Slovo in The Observer
• Melissa Green in the Los Angeles Review of Books

The regular columnists:

• Laurie Penny in The New Statesman
• Lucy Mangan in Stylist
• Roxane Gay in The Guardian US
• Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent
• Caitlin Moran in The Times
• Lauren Laverne in The Pool
• Ella Risbridger in The Pool
• Sali Hughes in The Pool
• Bim Adewunmi in The Guardian
• Sophie Heawood in The Guardian
• Eva Wiseman in The Observer
• Tracey Thorn in The New Statesman
• Chimene Suleyman and Maya Goodfellow on Media Diversified
• Josie Pickens on Ebony
• Bridget Christie in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer on Publishing for Humans
• Juno Dawson in Glamour