Kerry Hudson's Blog, page 3

Coffee, a book on contemporary(ish) India & my ‘little...

Coffee, a book on contemporary(ish) India & my ‘little bit of London’ travelling bag (bought in Dalston, mended in Wood St, given a new strap in Walthamstow Market)…a week today & I’ll be flying Barcelona > Istanbul > Delhi > Dharamsala… (at Walthamstow Central, London)

Natural Light 2

I can’t say how honoured I am to be in the second volume of photographer Angel Caitlin’s Natural Light (named, aptly, Natural Light 2) a real passion project for Angela who sped across the globe to take these portraits of Scottish writers and Freight Publishing. Here’s the blurb: 

Stunning portraits from Scotland’s golden generation of literary writers.

In 1985 Angela Catlin s debut book Natural Light was published with an accompanying exhibition at the Edinburgh Book Festival that subsequently toured Scotland.

The 49 portraits of Scottish authors were heralded not only as spellbinding artistic works, but also as a broader encapsulation of a golden era of Scottish literature. Thirty years on, Catlin is revisiting the theme, featuring those seen in the original book such as Alasdair Gray, Jim Kelman and Liz Lochhead, but also casting light on another generation of literary greats including Ali Smith, AL Kennedy and Alan Warner.

I’m in such fine company, alongside friends and writers whose work I’ve long admired. 

Angela came down to London to take this picture when I was back for a few days from Budapest or Berlin (I can’t remember which). I do remember I have a knock-down screaming row with a very close friend that very morning and, ten minutes before we were due to meet, I was wandering about Kings Cross Station ugly-crying my eyes out (I’m a cryer - I think it’s kept me mostly sane you know).

By the time Angela arrived and I’d dried my eyes and got my game face on. I don’t think she guessed what sort of morning I’d had but she was chatty, kind, gentle. The shoot was undemanding but so interesting, perfect antidotes to a few of the sadness slings and arrows life can sometimes throw.

And this is the photo she took. Of all the professional photos I’ve had taken in the last few years, this one feels like it is really of ‘me’ not of ‘me the writer’. Maybe I’m looking a little fragile around the edges, maybe my eyes are a little swollen but there I am anyway, looking straight ahead, smiling, no front…because sometimes that’s the very best thing you can do.

This week...

I KNOW…I’ve been away for 1000 years. Life has been busy and amazing and surreal and knackering and…all the things and mostly all at once. 

But I like this blog. A wee scrapbook of the last happy five years of book writing and publishing and carousing my way around the globe and always back to East London. In an effort not to let it go to wherever MySpace went to die I thought I’d do short little blogettes. Little morsels of news and pictures. Still all the things…just not all at once.  

Don’t worry - I will inevitably sometimes write a War and Peace-long overshares and I promise to write at some point about two of the best things that have ever happened to me in the last year: winning the mighty fancy Prix Femina in France for Thirst and the same wee book shortlisting for the similarly swank Premio Strega in Italy last month.

But for now…in the last week…

I got invited to speak at the Kosmopolis Festival in Barcelona

TONY HOGAN … got a lovely review in the Italian equivalent of National Rail’s magazine

THIRST got bought by another country*

I came closer still to (actually fucking) finishing my third book**

I decided to gad about Europe for 2017 with my lover (because
we can) and so we’re starting with all of December at the beach in Lisbon***

Felt really fucking lucky that somehow this got to be my life****

*Haven’t got the contact yet so won’t say where…but I am especially chuffed about this one…

**I’m deep into the edit now and fucking loving carving out the story under all the layers of many other stories

***We’re staying here and I am mightily excited by the 70s retirement chic and the prospect of before-breakfast swims

****Though let it be known…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ZSKE38lTU

Guys, guys…YOU HAVE TO EAT HERE… (at Wolkite Kitfo...

Guys, guys…YOU HAVE TO EAT HERE… (at Wolkite Kitfo restaurants and cafe)

Lovely lunch & some #bookswag from...

Lovely lunch & some #bookswag from @chattobooks…excited especially for Marra’s Siberia tales especially…

Yesterday we rode every ride at the fair, ate ice-cream, played...

Yesterday we rode every ride at the fair, ate ice-cream, played pingpong & had K-fries & fizz while watching Karate Kid…perfect. #1yearanniversary

Thirst paperback out now - read all about it - see what I did there - happy birthday to Dave and Alena and their beautiful bruised love story

So yes, THIRST is out in beautiful, beautiful paperback* today. Available in all good…etc. 

My love story about two people who might never have met but somehow overcome their pasts, their differences, their need to protect themselves and their sore hearts to love each other. 

Alena from Siberia - here I think of my journey across Russia on the top bunk of sweltering trains, watching the green and grey of that vast country sweep by, sharing bread, cheese and cucumber with elderly carriage mates…and in every place I stopped seeing an ‘Alena’, slowly learning her, learning her wants and dreams. 

Dave from Hackney - and I think of think of the years I lived and loved on that stretch of Kingsland Rd. I’ve shared a lot of kisses on that street, cried on corners and danced in public with happiness - it was inevitable I would take Dave, lost and lonely, and put him somewhere so full of life he’d have no option but to live himself. 

This is my fourth year of having a book newly in shops and I am no less amazed or grateful that this has happened. A child who was told that voices like hers - working class, female, queer - shouldn’t count somehow gets to write books and then people open their hearts and heads and…listen. And sometimes, quite often it seems, they are nourished somehow from that. I get to show them a different world, I get to give them that sort of gift for listening…I really am tremendously fucking lucky. 

So yes…this was meant to be a short post…but basically FUCKING YES for books and readers and fragile love stories in unlikely places.

*Illustrated by the amazing Fortuna Todisco…the actual Kingsland Rd, and actual Dave and Alena drawn to my specification. 

Where the fuck have you been?

…and yes, I’m sorry I’ve been away so long. Perhaps I will just change the title of this place from Chatterbox to ‘Really sorry, I know it’s been ages, but look, LOOK how busy I’ve been’. 

So I thought, rather than just let this blog be absorbed into the internet ether from lack of use, I’d just updating by writing the entire contents of my head…really fast….with no censoring…and then put it directly into the public sphere. What can go wrong with that? 

Anyway, are you prepared for a bumper ‘What Kerry Did Next’ edition…go get yourself a drink and a snack then lets begin…

All the way back in May (I know, I know) I got invited to Aye Write to speak about Out There: an anthology of Scottish LGBT writing. I appeared with the wonderful Zoe Strachan, Allan Radcliffe and the mighty Jackie Kay. As ever, it was a fine festival. Years ago when I was only just starting to write, I saw Jackie do an event at Stoke Newington Hall - I remember being particularly struck by her warmth and humour - so it was bloody mind-blowing to be sharing a stage. After the event I went back to my room and ate a very large room service cheeseburger. It was fucking lovely. I know, Rock and roll. 

I week later I was rocking my best sweatshirt, neon trainer, skinny jeans soccer mom chic (if this ever becomes a fashion *thing* then I will have my moment I tell you) I caught a plane Inverness for my long awaited visit to Ullapool Literary Festival.   

There is so much to say about Ullapool that, as ever, I’m worried I’ll forget something or someone. Ullapool is a ridiculously special festival and place and such an honour to be invited to. It’s as near as I’d been to ‘home’ (Aberdeen) in a long time and I spent much of time there thinking about place, about the journey I’d been on and how coming from the place I did shaped that journey. There were so many highlights (I saw almost every single event) that it’s hard for me to pick them out…but hearing the Gallic short story writer Duncan Gillies read a story about the passing of time and mortality was incredibly moving, I had a wonderful walk around the Loch and fascinating conversation with writer/walker/brilliant clever woman Linda Cracknell, I shared a stage with Malaysian writer,

Chiew-Siah Tei and despite seeming like our stories and we had nothing in common, it turned the same themes were woven through our work, through our intention as writers. 

I don’t know if it was the place, the events, the incredible conversation but I found Ullapool so inspiring, somehow heart-opening. On my last night I walked down to the loch at about ten at night. A local had told me there would still be some sun to set and she was right. I sat, totally alone, completely peaceful and thanked my lucky stars, the setting sun and the wonderful Ullapool Festival committee for bringing me there.  

In May I also went to speak at the literary fiction students at City University and delivered an hour long ‘writing from life’ slot for a Guardian Masterclass. I ‘teach’ and talk about writing process quite a lot now. Though it goes against everything my mother ever taught me ‘pride will blow up in your hands and burn your eyelashes off’ I’m largely proud of the job I do when I ‘teach’. There’s a temptation to intellectualise the process of writing, to make it seem loftier than it is - but truly I believe that honestly, hard work, focus, curiosity are fundamental aspects of writing and too often neglected in favour of academic theory. It’s easy to doubt myself in academic situations, when I’m really giving the simplest of advice, so it always means a lot to me when students tell me how inspired they are by feeling that writing is within their reach, when ex-students contact me to tell me they’re still writing, that they think about my lessons or when I can see for myself that their writing is improving. 

I want to create access to writing, I want to make it something people can reach for…not something closed off - something sacred to be revered - but never attempted. So yes, occasionally, I feel really proud of the lectures/talks/workshops I give and the Guardian Masterclass (which I’d been nervous about) was one of those times.  

And then…are you keeping up?…do you need some sugar and to rehydrate? I went to France on a little book tour. This year Tony Hogan was shortlisted for a Cezam prize (a prize voted for by workers in offices, factories, prisons…I couldn’t be happier to be selected by those folks specifically) and so travelled from the biggest electrical company in Paris to Brest, Lorient, Anges, Nantes and back to Paris. There simply isn’t enough room to say how utterly overwhelmed I was by the kindness, warmth and generosity of all the people I met. For a week my days were a flood of lovely dinners with wonderful people, events where people came and had read the book and had thoughtful, insightful questions, trains and hotel rooms and little sunny morning walks around towns I would only glance with thimble-like cups of hot black coffee and coffee éclairs. 

A special word must be said here for my wonderful friend Corrine who hired a car, drove with her partner to Angers and stayed overnight so we could finally meet - I genuinely thought I might have a wee cry, I was so touched. Thank you Corrine. 

I finished my tour in Nantes and did my final event with international literary super star

Alaa Al Aswany

…we both had the same to say, ‘don’t over-intellectualise, bring life to your writing, be honest, be curious about the world around you, working class narratives have true power’. He was an exceptional man and I felt very honoured to share a stage with him. 

Then I rolled myself back to Paris (guys, I love food…you know this…but I actually took to leaving a little on my plate after a week) for my week of PR for Tony Hogan and Thirst jointly. 

(Can we pause to appreciate how mental this is? Me, Kerry, who grew up on council estates, who the last time she was in Paris was working as a cleaner…is in Paris riding around in taxis with her PR rep, chic cafe hopping, doing PR for a novel…?)

And so the week was…many interviews…among others for Elle Magazine (I know, right?!) for La Croix, for France Info (funny, when I was riding in the back of the cab to the radio interview with the beautiful and lovely Anne (who made me want to move to Paris just so we could be pals…) and feeling quite overwhelmed I looked up at a fucking enormous building and was like ‘Oh, and I suppose that’s where the radio interview is - hahaha’…and yep, it was). 

I had lunch with fifteen journalists, bloggers and booksellers. I met the wonderful working class writer

Édouard Louis and drank martinis and watched burlesque with my beautiful YA novelist friend Amy Plum (that lady gives good night out…). I got to spend time with my French editor Lily - I take tips from her each time we meet…she is a clever, cool woman and got to meet and thank (profusely) my French translator Florence

Lévy-Paoloni. I ate and talked masses and repeatedly felt like a little Scottish spud among all the chic, clever, beautiful people. I was certainly overwhelmed and giddy and unbelieving it was all happening. 

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 go back to France in September for another week of PR…I cannot believe I am so lucky. 

No sooner was I back than I got to see the covers for Italian Thirst and then it came out in Italy and got this amazing review in Amica. 

Plus I got to see the French Thirst….and got a whole box of Thirst paperbacks…Thirst, my wee love story set between Hackney and Siberia, will be newly out in bookshops in Italy, France and the UK…fucking crazy right?

Then, perhaps the highlight of my year and certainly one of my career, I got to deliver a provocation on Diversity in publishing for the Writers’ Centre Norwich (please do have a read of it if you haven’t…it has my heart and all of my brain in it) as part of their National Conversation series. I am so honoured I got to talk about it and heartened by the positive responses. It was picked up by The Bookseller and Guardian and I also delivered it at the Bloomsbury Institute here with

Alexandra Pringle, Group Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury, Nikesh Shukla (Meatspace), editor and Booker Judge, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey and from the floor, expert witness Danuta Kean

. 

If you read this far please come forward and claim your special prize, you lovely freaky thing. Back tomorrow…BECAUSE THIRST paperback is out…no one knows but you right now…you’re special.

Thirst cover reveal - everything is more glamorous in Italian

Sete, out 8th of July from Minimum Fax….Dave and Alena all the way from Hackney to Siberia.

Cover reveal - the beautiful THIRST paperback cover

…Illustrated to What Dave and Alena Look Like In My Head spec by Fortuna Todisco and with my beloved Kingsland Road in it too. I couldn’t love it more.