NCLA has had an eventful autumn with the culmination of One Book 2010
(see below) and readings from a range of international heavyweights including
novelist Ian McEwan and poet Paul Muldoon. The winter programme is just as
packed with Naomi Alderman, Emily Woof, David Almond, Anne Fine, Roddy Doyle,
Anne Stevenson, Linda France, Anna Woodford and Katharine Towers visiting
NCLA. There is also plenty of exciting news about NCLA’s alumni and a
soon-to-be launched online literary magazine for which we welcome your
contributions.
Earlier
this month almost 800 people came to Newcastle City Hall to hear Kazuo
Ishiguro and Jackie Kay in conversation. In the weeks before the event, 5,000
copies of Never Let Me Go were distributed to Newcastle University
students with several reading groups organised to enable students to share
their experience of the novel before hearing the author.
Ishiguro’s
account of his work was permeated by four key motifs: music, metaphor,
memory, and morality. He told the audience how he initially set out to be a
songwriter in the Bob Dylan mode. The sense of voice has continued to be a
profound influence on his approach to narrative and in writing fiction he is
aware of ‘the space between the lines’: of how music carries emotion.
In Never
Let Me Go he created the boarding school, Hailsham, as a parallel
universe where the inevitability of death could be contemplated; almost
without emotion. There is never a point in the novel where the prospect of
their future horrifies the children of Hailsham: they only gradually come to
understand what lies ahead. Ishiguro first attempted to write this story in
1995 and tried and failed a second time. It was not until the new science of
cloning came to public notice that he felt he had found a suitable imaginary
world.
Born in
Nagasaki nine years after its destruction by atom bombs, Ishiguro’s knowledge
of the harsh reality of life came early. He moved to
England when he was five years old and once he realised that he would not
return to Japan, he realised he would have to ‘pin it down in fiction’.
Memory is enormously powerful in his writing: Jackie Kay suggested that he
constructs narratives built on ‘emotional chronology’ rather than linear
progression. Ishiguro talked about choosing the narrator, building bridges to
connect sequences in telling the story and how his characters come to terms
what is of greatest importance to them if life is short.
Ishiguro
also talked candidly about spending time as a young man trying to work out
his values before deciding to become a writer, which led Jackie Kay to ask
whether Never Let Me Go was to be interpreted as a parable.
Following
the success of this event students are capturing responses of those who
attended, by inviting a selection to be interviewed. Ishiguro himself was
delighted by the quality of the questions and very much enjoyed the evening.
Attendees
at this event at 7pm on Thursday 4th November in Culture Lab can
expect an entertaining evening. Both writers are remarkable for their
versatility as well as their literary distinction. Naomi Alderman won the Orange Award
for New Writers in 2006 for her first novel, Disobedience, and was
Sunday Time Young Writer of the Year in 2007 but is equally willing to
experiment with online storytelling. Emily Woof, familiar
for her acting on screen and stage, published her first novel, The Whole
Wide Beauty, earlier this year to much praise. They will be introduced by
Professor Bill Herbert.
Tickets
(£6/£4) are available online from the
shop. Alternatively,
call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
With their ability to explore profound and sometimes extraordinary experiences with humour and simplicity David Almond and Anne Fine could probably fill a hall with enthusiastic young readers as well as adults. David Almond first attracted attention with his novel Skellig (1998), which won both the Whitbread Children’s Award and the Carnegie Medal; successive novels have won or been shortlisted for numerous awards, and his latest novel, My Name is Mina, has already received enthusiastic reviews.
Anne Fine’s fiction appeals to children of all ages, and has the capacity to make the reader both laugh out loud and wince. She has twice won the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award, as well as being Children’s Laureate from 2001 - 2003 and receiving the OBE for services to literature.
As reviewers have called both writers ‘canny’, Matthew Grenby, who is introducing them, will be kept on his toes. They will appear on Thursday 11th November at 7pm in Culture Lab, Newcastle University.
Tickets (£6/£4) are available online from the
shop. Alternatively,
call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
Roddy Doyle, a Man Booker prize winner, and one of Ireland’s greatest writers, is presenting the Sixth Fickling Lecture on Developments in Children’s Literature on Thursday 18th November at 5.30pm in the Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, Newcastle University. Talking about the centre for writing that he set up in Dublin in 2009, his theme is ‘Fighting Words: The Write to Right’. This will be an event of great power.
Tickets are free, but anyone wishing to attend should register by following this link.
Saying the World is an
event over two days, beginning on Friday 26th November at 7pm with a reading by Anne Stevenson which
will be preceded by a talk by Angela Leighton, Senior Research Fellow at
Trinity College, Cambridge. A new collection of essays entitled Voyages
Over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson, edited by Angela
Leighton, has just been published. Anne Stevenson recently received an honorary
degree from Newcastle University so this presents a wonderful opportunity
to hear her voice directly.
Tickets (£6/£4) are available online from the
shop. Alternatively,
call Melanie Birch on 0191 222 7619 or email melanie.birch@ncl.ac.uk
This
festival celebrating women poets continues on Saturday 27th November from 11am - 8pm in Culture Lab, Newcastle University. Among those
taking part are Linda France, Anna Woodford Carola Luther, Jo Shapcott and
Deryn Rees Jones and Katharine Towers.
For full information about the programme, including how
to register, please follow this link.
NCLA’s new online literary magazine frictionmagazine.co.uk will go
live in November 2010. The centre hopes to attract submissions from writers
who are internationally renowned as well as those who are new and emerging.
The editorial board is pleased to have received a large number of submissions
for the first edition, from writers all over the country. Other contributions
– blogs, reviews, commentaries and reflections are also welcome as is any
feedback you may have.
Follow the Centre on Twitter and stay up
to date with events and other activities.
Linda France, the Leverhulme Writer in Residence at Moorbank Gardens, will be watching what happens in the glasshouses and outside them. She hopes to write poetry inspired by the location and to work on a sculptural text piece with the letter carver, Alec Peever, for the newly-refurbished Desert House.
All three of Newcastle University’s Professors of Creative Writing are contributing to the BBC Radio 3 Freethinking Festival. Sean O’Brien has written a new audio drama designed to be listened to on the walk over the Gateshead Millennium Bridge and this can be downloaded from 29th October. Jackie Kay will be contributing to The Verb and W.N. Herbert is going to be talking about the cultural and symbolic significance of Hadrian’s Wall on Friday 7th November at 1pm at The Sage Gateshead. His own home was constructed from stone pilfered indirectly from the Wall. His essay will be broadcast on Radio 3’s The Essay on Wednesday 10th November at 11pm.
Anna Woodford, a former PhD in Creative Writing student, has won the Salt Publishing Crashaw Prize for her first collection of poetry, Birdhouse.
Katharine Towers was mentioned in the last newsletter for reaching the longlist for the 2010 Guardian first book award with her collection The Floating Man. The collection has now also been shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.
Kachi Ozumba and Linda France are taking part in The Durham Book Festival Inside for the women prisoners at HMP Low Newton, which will involve a series of workshops and readings.
Creative Writing PhD student Kachi Ozumba is publishing the short story, Gay Kay, in the October/November 2010 issue of The London Magazine and The Devil's Lies in an anthology of short stories called Exposure to be published by Cinnamon Press in November 2010.
Creative Writing PhD student Alex Lockwood has had his work performed as part of the 100 Faces, 100 Stories Exhibition in support of the homeless charity Newcastle Crisis. His reflection on the experience has been published on the Changing Minds, Changing Lives blog which is part of the Changing Lives Through Literature Initiative.