Susie Wild's Blog: Wildlife, page 40

London launch of New Welsh Short Stories

Lovely to see so many Rarebit writers and friends featuring in Seren's New Welsh Short Stories...  and to hear Joe Dunthorne, Cynan Jones and Eluned Gramich read a few of my favourites at our London local The Wheatsheaf in Fitzrovia.





New Welsh Short Stories (Seren, 2015)
Rarebit: New Welsh Fiction (Parthian, 2014)

Parthian Rarebits at the Tin Shed Experience, The Laugharne Weekend 2015

Car trouble may have prevented a few of our Parthian Rarebits getting to Laugharne, but local poets and the brilliant band The Newly Deads pitched in to help our sessions sing and dance as planned and I read some new work too. Thanks to Francesca Rhydderch and Damian Walford Davies for my lift from Carmarthen Station and Jo and Jo for the lift back... and to The Tin Shed for being a brilliant venue, as ever, and my free drinks... and to Sion Tomos Owen, Tyler Keevil and Georgia Carys Williams and their cars for not breaking down!

Urban Wasteland (Take 2)

We walked and walked and walked and took lots of photos... this is a favourite that Torben took... i'm obsessed with this machine...

Amazon Author Page | Susie Wild

http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B004GHR9D4

Neglectful

Hello Blog

I've been  terribly neglectful / very very busy / away / in  love / writing.

I'll catch up with some back dated stuff soon.

News in brief:

I am still working for Parthian Books, now as Publishing Editor... some of the books and authors I am working with can be seen here: http://www.parthianbooks.com/node/1609 including Carole Burns, Susmita Bhattacharya, Richard Owain Roberts, Michael Oliver-Semenov, Gee Williams, Tony Bianchi, Sion Tomos Owen, Lloyd Markham, the Welsh Writers Trust, Gwenno Dafydd and Rebecca F. John.

I am also still with the University of Glos, teaching prose to their students on the MA in Creative and Critical Writing, and I have been guest lecturing here and there including Aberystwyth University and Cardiff MET.

Feb 10th: Favourite question from a student today... 'We were expecting someone really old but you look young. Do you think you are young?' Yes I do.
Feb 9th: Up and out in to the liminal time, a soft - edged foggy twilight, dosed up on medicine and watching the sun rise above frosted hills, rooftops, rivers, mountains, fields... ear worm of 'It's a long way to Aberystwyth... (well) it's a long way... by train...'
and then...
Watching the starling murmurations over / under the pier in Aberystwyth as the tide rolls in and the light rolls out.

On the performance front, I've taken a bit of quiet time to work on the new books, poetry pamphlet almost finished now, but I did perform as a guest feature at Heartspoken at the Kuku Club towards the end of 2014.


& some of the upcoming literary events I've organised can be found here: http://www.parthianbooks.com/content/2015-events

Susie

Dinefwr 2014: Speed Dating Writers

Don’t miss the chance to fall in love during Dinefwr’s ‘speed dating’ event with Parthian and Seren writers on Saturday 21st June!
[This post is mostly taken from www.parthianbooks.com]For the second year, amid the magical and mythical surroundings of Dinefwr Park and Castle, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, the Dinefwr Literature Festival will take place on the weekend 20-22 June.This bilingual festival (Welsh-English) is a celebration of words in all their different forms – poetry, prose, history, stand-up comedy, song lyrics – and  it offers an amazing programme of national and international writers, award-winning poets and emerging literary talent, among which Parthian and Seren are represented rather nicely!All the events are situated in a stunning 17th century property, Newton House, and in the Old Laundry, on Saturday 21st June at 8.15 pm, the Speed Dating Writers event will take place, featuring three novelists, two poets and a Canadian on a high-octane ride into new innovative writing – namely Parthian’s and Seren’s Dan Tyte, Rhian Elizabeth, Carly Holmes, Jonathan Edwards, Dai George and Tyler Keevil. They will have ten minutes each to charm you with their poetry and prose so that you might fall in love… with their writing! Hosted by Parthian Publishing Editor Susie Wild (yep that's me).         Between the one hundred plus events proposed, you can always have a look around the festival, finding excellent food and drink, medieval cooking, nature walks, Dylan Thomas’ writing shed, as well as an antiquarian book bus and a bookshop in the Newton House, where you could find your favourite author’s books signed!Find the full programme and information here:http://www.dinefwrliteraturefestival.co.uk/2014-artists
The Event is supported by Welsh publisher Parthian and Seren, and the Dinefwr Festival is organised by Literature Wales in partnership with National Trust, Cadw, and University of Wales Trinity Saint David and is supported by Arts Council of Wales. The Dinefwr Literature Festival received Arts Council of Wales Lottery funding for the 2014 festival.

Hay Festival 2014

I had a splendid time at the Hay Festival this year. On my first trip up we were celebrating Parthian's 21st birthday with a cabaret style evening of readings, mini q&a sessions and an amazing birthday cake made by one of the fab Hay crew. Rich and I hosted and evening that featured readings from Tyler Keevil, Rachel Trezise, Sion Tomos Owen, Jemma L. King, Carly Holmes, Holly Muller, Dan Tyte, and Joao Morais, and an interview with Rarebit's illustrator John Abell. Here are a few photos...

Books, Books, Books: Including the first outing of new books Tonypandemonium by Rachel Trezise and The Undressed by Jemma L. King
Let Them Eat Cake


Autograph Corner
Deckchairs and Wine
Me + Hay Loot
The Parthian Dance Troupe?
With many thanks to the Queen of Hay Street Style Rebecca Pescod for taking these! We all had rather a lot of fun and we hope you did too...
Rebecca is Never Underdressed

Bethan Elfyn (L) and Viv Albertine (R) on air on BBC Wales. I'm just out of shot.
Dan Tyte was also on the show earlier in the week
Hay week also featured readings and interviews with John Harrison, Ifor Thomas, Dai Smith, Rachel Trezise, Jemma L. King, Jon Gower, and many more from Parthian's 21 year history. On the last Saturday of the festival I met some of my favourite writers including Lorrie Moore, Joshua Ferris, and Siri Hustvedt and they all signed my books. I also happened to pop by the BBC Radio Wales Hay Studio to have an on air chat with Bethan Elfyn at the same time as Viv Albertine, and if you are quick enough you can listen again to me here, I am about 43 minutes in, just after Viv Albertine and therefore a bit of a tripping-over-my-words fan girl, but there is some sense and the music that comes before makes it worth listening from the start, trust me.

In Praise of Dylan
That evening I attended the special Dylan Thomas event [416] with Rob Brydon, Tom Hollander, Cerys Matthews and Jonathan Pryce, and featuring Jeff Towns' A Pearl of Great Price. The BBC have uploaded the session onto iPlayer, so you can watch it online now.

Rob Brydon @RobBrydon · Jun 2It's called A Pearl of Great Price. It's on Amazon but ideally you'll buy it from a local bookshop run by lovely local people. Locally.ReplyReplied to 0 timesRetweetedRetweeted 27 times27FavoritedFavorited 107 times107MoreRob Brydon @RobBrydon · Jun 2At Hay I read a letter from Dylan Thomas to a Pearl Kazin. Now I'm reading the book that collates them. It's great, will tweet a link...ReplyReplied to 0 timesRetweetedRetweeted 14 times14FavoritedFavorited 42 times42More
(L-R) Jon Gower, Matthew Francis and Rhian Elizabeth
Sunday was more of a pottering day of pub lunches, shop browsing and sitting in the sun but I did manage to see Rhian Elizabeth and Matthew Francis talking about unreliable narrators with Jon Gower, and rounded off the festival with a hilarious Bill Bailey, who made me laugh so much it hurt.

Michael and Nastya: On Tour Now
Next up: Catch me on the Sunbathing in Siberia Tour with Michael Oliver-Semenov and Parthian Books. Weds 4th June, Mozart's, Swansea 8pm. Thurs 5th June, Cameo Club, Pontcanna, Cardiff 7.30pm and book signings at Waterstones Cardiff and Wellfield Road Bookshop in Cardiff on Sat 7th June.

Then I'll be getting ready to host Speed Dating Writers at Dinefwr Festival followed by my own birthday fun. See you out and about!

Sooz x

The Writing Process Tour: Next Stops

One week on from my own stop on The Writing Process Blog Tour, Susmita Bhattacharya fills us in on her own writing, including her debut novel, The Normal State of Mind, that I am working with her on for Parthian Books:

Susmita reads her Rarebit anthology short story in Mumbai recently.
'How did I choose the theme for my novel, The Normal State of Mind? I had an image in my mind. Two women wading through the Mumbai floods, trying to make it to safety. I knew I had to write about them. But who were they? I knew one of them was a widow, because she was crying as she passed by her husband’s workplace. And the other? I wanted to write about someone I didn’t know much about. Someone I wanted to know well. '
How writing is different with young children...
'My writing process has had two distinct periods: Pre-parenthood and post. The pre period was very unproductive, and basically I was a lazy writer. Great ideas, lofty ambitions, and an abundance of time. Result: Nothing. Post-parenthood: Sleepless nights. Baby blues. Feeding. Working part time. No time to spare. Therefore an urgency to write whenever I could spare some time for it. Result: Something. '
Read the full story over on Susmita's blog, and then follow the tour on to discover more new writers. Kit Habianic's entry is coming soon.

Writing Process Blog Tour

I was having tea and cake with Carole Burns in Pettigrew Tea Rooms, one of my favourite places for Cardiff editorial meetings that aren't in the pub, when she mentioned that she was taking part in the Writing Process Blog Tour and she wondered if I might like to too. As Carole explains in her blog: 'The Writing Process Blog Tour is a kind of whistle-stop tour of writers exploring their writing process -- they answer four questions about their work, then send you on to the next writer. Today, I'm one of the stops.' 
The next stop was Ivy Alvarez, whose brutal, brilliant second poetry collection, Disturbance (Seren, 2013) is really worth a read. A recipient of writing fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Hawthornden Castle and Fundacion Valparaiso, her work is published in journals and anthologies in many countries and online, with selected poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.
Carole Burns, whose short story collection The Missing Woman will come out with Parthian next year, is also Head of Creative Writing at Southampton University, a co-organiser of the XX Women's Writing Festival, author of Off The Page and a regular author interviewer for The Washington Post. She had asked at our meeting, as many people tend to do, how my own writing was coming along. I made the little half laugh that I usually make in reply. So she suggested that it might be good for me to answer the four questions and think about my own writing for a change. 
Here you go...
What am I working on?
Several projects. My first (as yet unnamed) poetry collection, my second short story collection (No Laughter After Midnight) and my first novel (The Blackhole Resort) being three of them. At the moment, for gigs and other deadlines, I am focusing on the poems and stories. Much to my potential agents / publishers disappointment. But come June I plan to dust the novel off once again and get back to it. I've been chipping away at it since the first book was signed off. I don't think it is the next The Goldfinch but it might take me as long to polish off, so I understand the eye rolling of my authors when I tell them to hurry up with their novels / edits. The key for me is consecutive time to focus. Which I now have again.
Saying that, I'm a bit of an ideas girl. So typically I've also got a plan for a creative non-fiction book that I've been researching on and off for a while. It may or may not include some of my own life writing. There's a book of essays, a play and a sitcom also waiting in the sidelines. Probably for a long time. When I did my MA it turned out that I'm also pretty good at screenwriting, but I didn't watch a lot of TV back then. I didn't even have a TV. Almost three years with my partner has changed that. The BBC should probably invite me in.
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
There is less of it? Generally my work gets described as dark and quirky, with oddball lonely characters that I am too mean to. Not a lot has changed there. My poetry is a little less self-obsessed. It has fewer pints and far fewer men... and more plants and random illnesses in it, much like my life. My prose has more dialogue and adventure. I still like alliteration. The best ideas still turn up like long lost friends when I'm feverish or hungover or just dropping off to sleep. I dream ideas more than I used to also.
Why do I write what I do?
Compulsion. Ego. Self-imposed deadlines and gigs. Because I am fascinated by people and relationships and how we can continue to mess everything up but still have okay lives and redeem ourselves. But also because we can't. Because I have written stories since I've been able to type on my first typewriter. Because the world often confuses me and this is a way to examine it. Because I love science and maths and originally was going to become a psychologist. Because I like our quirks and oddness. Because I like us. Because I'm often better at fixing my character's lives than my own (although I generally choose not to because that makes me feel better). Because I have a cruel streak. But also such a huge capacity for guilt. So it is better I am cruel to the fictional people. Because I've got insomnia or I had more wine / coffee / sugar than I should have. Because there is nothing that excites me as much as good literature.  Although good sex / art / music / food / weather / fireworks / thunderstorms all come close.
How does my writing process work?
I'm pleased to say I've carved a writing day back in to my busy working week. 
Having a job that involves reading every day is helpful too, although I have to remind myself to make time to read other writers that I adore, and more I've yet to discover. I wish I didn't need to sleep. I wish I could pause time and read all the books I want to read and then start life up again. I'd be a much better writer for it, and I could still have an active social life.
I am always writing. I write in my head. Snatches and scraps of writing, and those mulling big ideas. I can't not. I keep (lots of) notebooks and feel a gigantic sense of panic if I don't have a notebook and pen in my bag. Usually I need three notebooks and eight pens. I've managed to make these notebooks smaller though as my friends despaired at how many bags I carried on me everyday. The Kindle also helped with that.
I will dissect these notebooks for the gems of ideas, and the bits that go together, then type them up, print them out and stick them in pocketed project folders. I like to research topics or images to use as a jump off point. Then I'll grab one of these prompts and write for the day. Starting is easy. Finishing is... 
For the stories I am writing around the ideas of shared space, loss and phobias. A version of the title story was published last year in The Lampeter Review about a woman plagued by noises that she tries to collect in jam jars. They are all about women at the moment, but some may gender swap, and there are some male stories still to be written. There's a woman scared of the weather and another haunted by the ghost of her husband as she travels to turn off his life-support machine. I tend to write a story either all in one go - not moving from my desk for 12 hours - or I'll write in 500-1000 word stints. Then I usually edit them a lot, but I also have a habit of sending them out too soon or not at all. I'm trying to break that.
The poems are more varied. Some are to do with gravel, computer games, bananas, Batman, gluten intolerance, vertigo, balloons, body parts, Cheltenham Race Week, hair, forests, journeys and silliness. I write them when out walking, on journeys or in the shower. Like Ivy, I tried to write one a day, and I failed... but, now that I've stopped teaching once a week, I'm also catching up with the wonderful 52 project - writing a poem a week, with prompts and examples and a forum to share and comment on work each week - and I'm forming a super group with talented friends for regularly workshopping poems, which I'd been meaning to do for ages. That should scare me into upping my game again, I hope.
& the novel, perhaps I'll talk more about that when it is done. 

Up next, two Parthian authors:
Kit Habianic is a London-based writer, originally from Wales. Her debut novel Until Our Blood is Dry is published by Parthian Books and currently serialised in the Western Mail. The novel tells the story of the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985 and of two South Wales coalfield families whose lives are torn apart by the dispute. Kit has published several short stories in literary magazines and anthologies.
Susmita Bhattacharya was born in Mumbai, India. She sailed around the world in an oil tanker for three years with her husband, recording her voyages through painting and writing journals. She received an M.A. in Creative Writing from Cardiff University in 2006 and has had several short stories and poems published since. She lives in Plymouth with her husband, two daughters and the neighbour’s cat.  Her debut novel, The Normal State of Mind, will be published by Parthian Books in 2014.

Spring Update 2: My Own Writing

So, as you can see by Blog Update 1: Work & Stuff my writing and performing has taken a bit of a back seat for the first 1/4 of the year - I even cancelled a couple of gigs in the name of other jobs. On top of this I've had a number of ongoing (still being slowly resolved) minorish health issues that have meant that outside of all the work, my usual crazy levels of energy have been zapped, and then there was the sadness of losing two dear creative people from the world in quick succession too.

But, as the sun comes out, and the flowers too, I find myself with more time on my hands, time off even... and a holiday abroad to look forward to, and so my thoughts have returned to my own writing. The notebooks full of ideas scribbled on trains to and from jobs are spread open on my desk / the coffee table / any available surface and the half poems and the stories awaiting editing have been dusted off and pulled out of draws or down from shelves and performances are being gently scheduled in.

I've carved a writing day back into my working week.

My dream of setting up a very select Poetry Group for sharing and workshopping new work is perhaps to be realised this year with the help of some enthusiastic and talented friends.

& so the next books edge closer towards completion.

Catch me airing a mix of new and old poems at The Back of the Pub Poetry Club in The Fountain Inn on the Friday Night of the Dylan Poetry Weekend (2-4 May 2014) in Laugharne, along with Mab Jones and pals. My dearest friend Rhian Edwards is on at 7pm that very same night. Loads of other great people doing proper turns on the rest of the bill, and some brilliant theatre bits and bobs too. I will also read a couple of poems at the Bare Fiction event on the 30th of April at Gwdihw in Cardiff.

The Arabic translation of my short story 'Aquatic Life' appeared in Albataka Review: Brush with Fate - Voices From Wales along with other stories in translation by Rachel Trezise, lloyd robson, Nigel Jarrett, Jon Gower, Tristan Hughes and Lewis Davies.

Carole Burns has asked me to write a blog on my writing process for the Writing Process Blog Tour, joining a chain in which both she and Ivy Alvarez have contributed. It is a kind of whistle-stop tour of writers exploring their writing process -- they answer four questions about their work, then send you on to the next writer. My entry will be up on Monday the 21st April.

Hopefully you'll see some more words in print soon too. I post them out, like little wishes, and wait and see if they come true.