Kerry Hudson's Blog

Aye, that’ll do 2017

I started 2017 on a beach in Portugal. I had a perfect bruise imprint of a giant black dog’s teeth on the fleshy part of my upper arm. That morning a dog had leapt at me, teeth bared and bit down hard while its owner casually hit it until it released me. Thanks to my big winter coat, I didn’t lose a chunk of my arm and we caught a coach to the beach as planned. At midnight we watched fireworks over the inky sea and then later, down at the shore, witnessed a line of over-boozed teenage boys peeing long arcs into the famous Nazare waves while their skimpily dressed girlfriends shivered patiently beside them.

I woke on the first morning of 2017 knowing how I should restructure my third novel (which had massively and fucking annoyingly eluded me for most 2016) and with a fresh understanding that, in the wake of Brexit and Trump the rise right wing fuckwittery generally, I needed my writing to ‘do something’. Of course all writing ‘does something’ but I needed what I wrote to fit into my own personal sense of trying to resist, persist, to fight…and that is when I started thinking about writing a book about what it is like to grow up in poverty, to grow up in a society which is structurally unequal and to question how, decade to decade, nothing seems change though the problems are clear.

In 2017 we travelled through ten countries. From Lisbon we travelled to Bangkok where we spent two months exploring our neighbourhood Sois, careening across the city on motorbikes, sometimes taking a trip to the sea where we slept in bamboo rooms on stilts, the sound of the waves whooshing underneath us like breath.

Next, I wanted to show Peter my beloved Vietnam. We took sleeper trains from Saigon to Hanoi. I showed him my old haunts, we found new ones. On a windy mountain pass in Sapa Peter proposed with a tiny sapphire ring carried with him all the way from Saigon. I said yes and we sat down with our motorcycle drivers and a man who owned the tarpaulin shack at the edge of the mountain and drank 2in1 coffee and Redbulls in celebration. It was perfect.

We flew to Malaysia and trekked a National Park where giant lizards roamed and ended up on a beach with hammocks and cheeky one armed monkeys. Otherwise in Malaysia we ate. Bowls and bowls of Chinese, Indian, Malay food our faces full of happiness and noodles.

After that there was a month in Prague, two months in a much changed Budapest in a grand, crumbling apartment, a month in summery Krakow swimming in quarries and drinking in Absinthe bars. I briefly returned to the UK to meet a ton of excellent writers and literary types as part of International Literary Showcase in Norwich. I have plenty to say about these places and that time but probably the most important thing to mention is that in Krakow I finally (fucking finally) finished that tricky (so fucking tricky) third novel and wrote the proposal for my first nonfiction book, Lowborn - the book I want to write to ‘do something’.

When we’d left the UK our intention had been to travel and work indefinitely but, as has always happened to me after five or more months on the road, I started to wish for ‘home’. Nowhere seemed quite right enough to put down roots, learn a language and bend ourselves to a place’s new ways. Besides, I had a book to write which would see me travel up and down the UK. And so we moved to Liverpool.

I wouldn’t quite say we picked Liverpool by sticking a pin in a map but mostly we did. We knew that London, as much as it was home, had become financially impossible – we didn’t want to be clinging on to our fingernails to a city. We wanted a city that wanted us. Scotland was too far from our former life, friends and family. We’d both visited Liverpool and quite liked it, it was ‘in the middle things’, it was a city, it had a Tate and the seaside nearby. OK, we thought, why not there?

It was risky and it was also the best decision we ever made. Liverpool is one of the warmest, most humane places I have ever lived. Every day I leave my house and have an interaction that renews my faith in the inherent goodness of people. There is gold to be found in Liverpool – brilliant art, gigs, food, drink, cinema and all the rest of it. London will always have a piece of my heart. I miss the hubbub, the sheer abundance of life there. It was the closest thing I’d ever had to home. But Liverpool is treating us so well. There’s less ‘noise’, it’s less exhausting and in that new space there is time to think, to be creative. Every day I say to Peter, ‘I love it here’. 

In Autumn I announced my new books would be published by Chatto & Windus. This is not a literary climate in which to count your chickens and especially not if you’re writing feminist, working class, literary fiction and happy is an inadequate word for how I feel about getting to write two more books, particularly with a publisher who have always championed (and an editor who has makes infinitely better) my strange brand of writing. Lowborn will be published a January 2019, the novel after that.

There have been other wonderful things this year. The opportunity to write a monthly series about writing Lowborn for The Pool (side note: in 2017 writing a single article for The Pool was my greatest ambition). Those pieces are the most personal thing I have ever written, I feel nervous to the pit of my stomach each time they are published, and they are one of the best things in a good long run of best things I’ve had.  Getting to write about things that I feel are important, for such a broad audience and the responses to those articles have been a joy, an utter joy. Likewise, my beautiful three weeks in snowy, mystical Latvia on residency thanks to the Writer’s Centre Norwich and the British Council. I ate a lot of soup, drank gallons of coffee, wrote tens of thousands words of Lowbown, fell in love with the residency cat, Rudi, and wandered the winter streets thinking, untangling, reassembling. It was bliss.

2017 hasn’t all been cake and delight, mind. I’ve struggled with anxiety this year and have fought those untamed things that have followed me for years no matter how far I travelled. But, like that big black dog in Portugal trying to sink its teeth in, they bruised but didn’t break the skin. Instead, they allowed for a big shift and an important change of perspective. But that’s probably another piece of writing for another time.

In 2018? I will write each day, think about the messy world we live in and where I stand within it. I’ll continue to explore how to make change, resist, persist, live well and with decency and I can’t think of anything I could be more grateful for.

Happy new year to youse lot. 

The Pool, Where are all the working class writers?, How much hot chocolate is a smuggleable amount?

I’m at the airport about to fly off to Latvia where I’ll be on residency at the International Writers and Translators’ House in Ventspils, a port town of Latvia. I feel very lucky to have three weeks to hunker down, work on Lowborn and maybe take a few snowy coastal walks. That means for the last few days I’ve been running around assessing thermal tights, moisturisers made for fisherman and how much hot chocolate powder can be taken through customs in ziplocks before I set off some sort of alarm (it turned out to be a lot - I didn’t even need to duct tape it to my body). It feels good to have rucksack on my back again knowing I’ll be wandering unfamiliar streets, finding new stories.

Before I go, I wanted to point out a few things to those of you who float about the internet reading this little whatever this is.

First, is that I’ve begun my regular monthly pieces for The Pool on the writing of Lowborn and, more broadly, what it is like to reflect on growing up as I did. The first is HERE. The second is HERE. I will say quietly (because I haven’t yet learned to think that pride isn’t something that will blow up and singe your eyebrows) that I’m proud of these pieces. They are very personal, I worked hard on them and the responses have made all the hard work and ‘naked’ feelings completely worth it. Kudos to The Pool for taking a chance on me and content to support a conversation about something they felt needed to be talked about.

Secondly, Kit de Waal (who also set up an amazing Birkbeck scholarship for writers from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds because she walks the walk) and BBC4 producer Mair Bosworth asked the important question ‘Where are all the working-class writers?’. I contribute a little, largely talking about the two page list I made about barriers to publishing for working-class writers and how without libraries I don’t know if I’d be a writer (I’d actually go as far as to say I don’t know if I’d be alive but that’s a story for another time and something I explore LOWBORN).

There is so much to say about this subject (and again, in many ways, LOWBORN answers some of this questionas well as where are all the WC: judges, artists, film makers, editors etc) so for now I will just leave you with the provocation I did for the Writers’ Centre Norwich on barriers to publishing for marginalised writers back in 2015: Lost Stories, Unheard Voices. Some of the stats might have changed but, sadly, not much else.  

Finally, I’m pretty honoured (when I use ‘honoured’ please read also ‘fairly intimidated’) to be contributing on a few panels and with a workshop to the British Council’s Literature Seminar on the theme Sexuality, Feminism and Masculinity. It’s being chaired by the brilliant Bernadine Evaristo and also coming to chat will be Juno Dawson, Sabrina Mahfouz, Nick Makoha, Paul McVeigh and Monique Roffey. This year it’s being held in one of my favourite cities, Berlin.

Now I’ve typed all that I can’t quite believe I’m so jammy.

Righto, time to have another adventure. Next dispatch: Latvia.

I’m in Paraty…a little Colonial city in the Rio de Janerio province…all bobbled...

I’m in Paraty…a little Colonial city in the Rio de Janerio province…all bobbled streets, white washed buildings, lush tropical forest and a gorgeous sleepy coastline. Today I hired a bicyle and cycled the coast, over little bridges, up steep hills…when I got too hot I stopped and got someone to hack a hole into a big green coconut for me or left my bike on the beach and ran into the sea (though it was as warm as bath water…). Tomorrow two lovely London friends will arrive - my first familiar faces in months - andwe’ll soend the day on a schooner (is that not an amazing word?) and then I’ll be off home…a night in Rio, an overnight flight to Madrid where my ex-wife will meet me for a few days holiday (women break up wit each other excellently, fact) and then back to London where, pretty much as soon as I hit the runway, I have tons of stuff going on…lots of teaching, festivals, workshops…basically all the stuff I’ve been missing out on in the last twelve months. 

I left Buenos Aires about a week ago. It was hard leaving - I find it harder and harder to leave places - I was just starting to feel at home, me and the city were just beginning to come to an understanding. Buenos Aires is a city of huge contradictions…wealth and poverty on the same stretch of street, age and youth, beauty and ruin…my time was a full of stark contrast. For most of my time I closeted myself away, worked as hard as I was capable of - I ran evening  circles , wrote my book, worked on all my other projects, cooked and ate at home…probably allowed myself to become a little too solitary, And yet, my time was also punctuated by sudden lovely friendships, nights drinking Fernet and dancing until dawn leaving nightclubs while the air was pale and still cool with my ears ringing, midnight visits to the ice-cream shop and chats about queer politics with my flatmates, amazing meals and long walks full of stories…Buenos Aires is a place of many things and I think maybe my experience reflected many of those faces. There are some cities, when I’m at the bus station or airport reflecting, that I know I won’t see again…but Buenos Aires isn’t one of them…

And then? Then on to a 22 hour bus to Paraguay. 

A Good News Day

So this is my news and here’s a link to the full press release.

I did have an alternative quote for The Bookseller (a longterm pash of mine, that magazine) which went something like (I’m paraphrasing here), ‘FFFFFFUUUUCCCKKKKKIIINGYESSSSSSMATTTTTEEEEEEE!!!!’ accompanied by a gif of a delighted piglet in a ball pool but, I think we can agree it’s for the best, sobriety kicked in.

Here’s a video of me looking moon-faced and delighted as I sign the contract in my local instead:

I am delighted though. I never imagined I’d get to write one book let alone four of them. Especially not with a literary heavyweight like Chatto & Windus as my publisher, not about something that’s so important to me, that I might actually be given a voice to talk about the things I think are fucked up, might be changed, should be paid attention to and more so than ever in the current climate.

Things you never imagine might happen. You can put that on my gravestone. Or name my debut alt-folk album that. Or ice my 40th birthday cake with those words. Etc.

It’s true though. I signed my first contract just before my 30th birthday while temping at a cancer charity. I so disbelieved my good fortune that even when my agent, Juliet, called and told me, I still insisted on going to see a Ben Affleck movie at the local Vue with an M&S sarnie as my celebration night (regrets, I have a few…).  That book was Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma and I expected nothing of it. Nothing. But I did, in fact, get some things, lots of good things. Not least of all reaching readers who told me my very personal story touched them, that they had read and understood it.  The next contract I signed was for Thirst, my strange working-class fractured love story set between Hackney and Siberia.  That was three years later, and, again, I just thanked my lucky stars and hoped for nothing more than a painless death.  

And that doesn’t go away, that feeling. I keep waiting for that feeling of WTF, WTAF, to go but it never has and now, seven years later, I’m quite attached to it – it makes the highs enjoyably dizzying and the celebrations go on for days because who knows when they’ll next come?

Reading through the posts of this sporadic emptying of my mind onto the internet (I think we can all agree the time for it to be even tenuously referred to as ‘a blog’ is long past) I found something I wrote between Tony Hogan and Thirst:

‘A long time ago…before Tony Hogan came out and I was so nervous that somehow I would fuck up this amazing thing that had happened…I decided that the only way I could negotiate this world I did not fit in in, a place of good fortune, a place of socially easy people with PhDs and perfect teeth…was just to be myself. Just know what I’m about, what my own values are, what’s important to me and what I consider to be extraneous bullshite. This is the very best advice I ever gave myself and works in almost every situation…and where I might have concertinaed under the acute weirdness of all of the unimaginable experiences that have occurred since I published my book - this wee mantra ‘work hard, be kind, don’t be an arsehole’ has helped me enjoy most of the fucking amazing stuff that has happened.’

I want to ask you, how has nothing changed? And I also want to say, I am so glad nothing has changed.

To know I’ll publish two more books is a joyous thing for which I am hugely grateful. To write a regular column for The Pool, to know I get to ride this rollercoaster for a few more years, these are wonderful things. The announcement was today and I have been overwhelmed by the goodwill, support and kindness. I feel beyond lucky. Truly. Absolutely. Very, very fucking lucky.  

More than that, to get to write a book like Lowborn feels like something exceptional. This is the book I’ve been waiting to write my whole life. It’s going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever written in every possible sense (gruelling is the word I’ve been using most often with friends) and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s a true privilege. It not even about telling my own stories anymore –even though telling them, speaking up, means a huge amount to me – it’s about getting to write other people’s stories. Stories that need to be heard. I’ll move heaven and hell to do those people, the people I grew up with, the younger, struggling me, the justice they deserve.

So, for those of you reading this, many of whom I bet have been reading since Tony Hogan was just another Bookseller announcement and a sick feeling in my belly, thanks for sticking with me, fancy a trip to Great Yarmouth?

Brunch at our local neighbourhood hangout…goats cheese...

Brunch at our local neighbourhood hangout…goats cheese pancake & burrito with hot apricot & pair juice. Spending a month in Prague was one of our very best plans. (at La Bohème Café)

Thirst forthcoming in...Turkey

Yeah it is! 

I’ve known about this for a little while now but today I signed the contract and that makes it legit. The Proprietor is my new Guy Richie Ganster Name too. 

The Turkish rights for THIRST have been bought by the publisher Altin Kitaplar who publish a wide range of authors from Agatha Christie, Stephen King to MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. 

Needless to say, I’m bloody delighted about this. The idea of Dave and Alena’s fragile love story being read by new readers in Turkey is just amazing and something I could never have imagined happening (as with so many things these last few years (another post for another post for another time…)) 

I was in Istanbul only last year and instantly fell in love with the beautiful city, the kindness of strangers, the well cared for wild cats and kittens sunning themselves on street corners (and on shop awnings). I’m so happy to think of a book I wrote in some of the beautiful bookstores we visited and maybe being read by some of the same folks who were so incredibly kind to us. 

So, hurrah! I’m hoping I can return to Turkey and meet readers and pet cats and eat breakfasts that cover the entire table top at some point. Until then it’s wonderful knowing my story will be there…

Another ridiculously bloody lovely #morningrun …those are...

Another ridiculously bloody lovely #morningrun …those are bola Da berlim (or custard & nutella doughnuts) bought for a euro from a little van beach side. I. Love. It. Here. (at Costa Da Caparica, Lisboa)

Child-like, giddy excitement to see my books in the local Dijon...

Child-like, giddy excitement to see my books in the local Dijon bookshop. Never ever gets old. #dreams (at Librairie Grangier)

To Dijon…France treating us beautifully as ever…...

To Dijon…France treating us beautifully as ever… (at TGV Lyon-Paris)

And…we’re off…first stop: Paris > Dijon...

And…we’re off…first stop: Paris > Dijon > Bligny-sur-Ouche. We’ll miss beautiful London, our excellent pals & family & our delightful Not Our Cat Bernie. Here’s us having one last cuddle & now we’re off to the Eurostar! #hangingwithbernie (at Wood Street, E17)