Val McDermid's Blog, page 10
March 18, 2017
McDermid picks her ‘New Blood’ authors…
Published March 17, 2017 by Benedicte Page
Fiona Cummins, Jane Harper, Joseph Knox and Kristen Lepionka have been revealed as the four debut authors picked by crime writer Val McDermid for her influential “New Blood” panel at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.
McDermid has hosted the annual panel since 2004 and has included S J Watson, Stuart MacBride, Clare Mackintosh, Belinda Bauer and Dreda Say Mitchell among her past New Blood picks.
Fiona Cummins’ Rattle (Macmillan) is a serial killer tale set in London’s Blackheath; Jane Harper’s The Dry (Little, Brown) tells of a triple killing in a small Australian town; Joseph Knox’s Sirens (Doubleday) is the story of a teenage runaway; and Kristen Lepionka’s The Last Place You Look (Faber) has PI Roxane Weary seeking to prove the innocence of a man on death row.
The New Blood panel will take place on Saturday 22nd July at the Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate, during the 2017 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Special guests for the festival, the 15th, will include Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Dennis Lehane, Brenda Blethyn, Peter May and Arne Dahl.
This article from The Bookseller website…
March 15, 2017
Wellcome prize shortlist announced: books that ‘will change lives’…
Six books are in contention for the annual award for excellence in science and health writing, including a trainee neurosurgeon’s posthumous memoir and books about the NHS, HIV/Aids and organ donorship.
The key thing about these books is that they draw people in to something they otherwise might find a bit scary to read about…
Spanning human origins, national health services, microbial life forms and death, the shortlist for the 2017 Wellcome Book prize has been hailed as one that will “shift perceptions” by chair Val McDermid.
Photograph: Thomas S.G. Farnetti | Wellcome Images
Announcing the six books in contention for the award, which pits fiction against non-fiction, McDermid told the Guardian: “The key thing about these books is that they draw people in to something they otherwise might find a bit scary to read about. There will be people who read one of the books on this list and it will change their lives.”
Read the full article on the Guardian website…
February 28, 2017
A retirement home for lesbians? Where do I sign up?
Enabling LGBT people to grow old together is not about creating a ghetto but about helping them to live later life openly, healthily and without fear…
When I used to live on the Northumberland coast, there was a game I played with visiting lesbian friends. On our walks and drives around the countryside, we’d identify houses we thought would make perfect lesbian retirement homes.
“No, that’s too exposed to the weather,” one would argue. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, you’d never get the staff,” said another. “The driveway’s too steep, we’d all break our hips in the winter,” a third objected.
But there was one thing we all agreed on. We really liked the idea of a community of lesbians growing old together more or less disgracefully. It may be a hangover from the ideas of communal living that gained a degree of traction in the 60s and 70s, often triggered by the political commitments of feminism and gay rights. But it’s one that retains a lot of appeal as we age.
Heaven knows, age comes with its indignities; this shouldn’t be one of them
Although attitudes towards sexuality have shifted radically in recent years, there are still significant levels of homophobia and transphobia around. Manchester city council, which is planning the country’s first local authority retirement community with a majority of LGBT residents, reports that elderly gay people fear hostility and discrimination from those charged with taking care of them. So they often hide their sexuality.
It seems profoundly wrong to me that after a lifetime of struggling to be accepted and to be open about who we are that we face being pushed back into the closet. Heaven knows, age comes with its indignities; this shouldn’t be one of them.
LGBT retirement homes are not about building a ghetto but rather being able to live life openly and without fear. To be surrounded by people with whom you have something in common. Often people move into such communities after a partner dies. How much healthier it must be to be able to express one’s grief freely, rather than hold back for fear of being judged.
Read the full article on the Guardian website…
February 13, 2017
Real-life concerns of scientists inspire Val McDermid drama on deadly outbreak…
Val McDermkd took part in a workshop with scientists & medical experts before writing the Radio 4 thriller “Resistance.”
by BRIAN FERGUSON
Leading Scottish crime writer Val McDermid has written a new BBC drama about an apocalyptic epidemic – based on the real-life concerns of scientists.
Their concerns about the rise of antiobiotic resistance across the planet will be replayed out in the Radio serial about a mystery illness which engulfs a music festival.
McDermid took part in a two-day workshop attended by scientists, academics, writers and radio producers which she says left her “profoundly shocked.” Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, was among those to give a presentation,
Fife-born author McDermid, who is best known for her series of books on the criminal psychologist Tony Hill, pitched the idea of an “uncontrollable epidemic.”
Gina McKee, star of Our Friends in the North and Notting Hill, plays a journalist caught up in the outbreak when she attends the music festival in the north-east of England.
The three-part serial, Resistance, will be broadcast on 3, 10 and 17 March on Radio 4.
Read the complete article on The Scotsman website…
February 12, 2017
Antibiotic abuse: the nightmare scenario…
A new radio drama by Val McDermid highlights the worrying prospect of antibiotic resistance becoming a global epidemic.
Imagine a world in which even the slightest scratch could be lethal. Cancer treatments, including chemotherapy, and organ transplants are no longer possible. Even simple surgery is too risky to contemplate, while epidemics triggered by deadly bacteria have left our health services helpless.
It is science fiction, of course – but only just. According to many doctors and scientists, the rise of antibiotic resistance across the planet could soon make this grim scenario a reality. And if it does, humans will have to face up to challenges that would once have seemed unthinkable. The question is: when – and how – might this horrific medical ordeal unfold for the human race?
We face returning to a time when every form of surgery was life-threatening
It is a question that crime writer Val McDermid will attempt to answer next month in an unusual way – in a three-part radio drama, Resistance, which is to be aired on Radio 4. In it she will put dramatic flesh on scientific warnings of the hazards we now face because of our past misuse of antibiotics.
“We are looking down a barrel, into a world that was like the one we had when there were no antibiotics,” says McDermid. “We face returning to a time when every form of surgery was life-threatening, because every form of surgery carries with it the danger of infections. Even going to the dentist to have a tooth out will have risks involved.”
Read the full article on the Guardian website…
January 31, 2017
Wellcome book prize reveals longlist for 2017 award…
Val McDermid, chair of this year’s judges, hails a selection that crosses divide between arts and sciences.
Danuta Kean
The Guardian
Crime writer Val McDermid, who is chairing the judges for this year’s Wellcome book prize, has criticised the divide between arts and sciences in the UK’s education system, speaking out as the longlist for the £30,000 award was announced.
In an interview with the Guardian about the longlist, which identifies the best science writing across fiction and nonfiction, The Wire in the Blood author said: “Science is clearly something that we need to be focusing our energy on, because that is where the economic future of the country lies and we really should be driving our education towards it – but that does not mean we should turn our back on the arts.”
Citing her own education in Scotland, McDermid said she feared the modern curriculum left little opportunity for students to be creative and investigate things that engage their interest “for the joy of it”.
“I have concerns about what is happening in education,” added the author, who has a son at school. “Everything is so curriculum-led now that there is very little opportunity for teachers to encourage students to go off and discover things for themselves.”
Developments in education, she added, meant that the Wellcome prize – one of the richest in the UK – was more important than ever because it focuses on making science accessible through both fiction and nonfiction.
The 12 books chosen for the 2017 longlist are split between seven factual and five fiction titles, ranging from Victorian gothic in Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent to Jo Marchant’s Cure, which investigates how the mind can cure the body. French novelist Maylis de Kerangal’s blow-by-blow account of a heart transplant in Mend the Living is also longlisted, and is the first foreign-language book to be considered for the award.
January 27, 2017
More than 200 writers to star in Aye Write! festival in 2017…
PHIL MILLER
for The Guardian
More than 200 authors, writers and celebrities, including Ian Rankin, the Makar Jackie Kay, Val McDermid and many more, will be attending Glasgow’s annual book festival, Aye Write!, this year.
Rankin will be marking 30 years of his most famous creation, John Rebus, while the new Makar, or national poet, will be at an event with former Makar Liz Lochhead and Glasgow’s Makar, Jim Carruth.
Aye Write! begins on March 9 and runs until March 19, while the Wee Write festival for children and young people, will have two family days as well as events for schools – and for the first time will have three venues.
Aye Write will be staged at the Mitchell Library as well as the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and, for the first time, at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Sauchiehall Street.
Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday, January 27.
The former Doctor Who and All Creatures Great and Small actor Peter Davison is also appearing, as are writer and artist John Byrne, Elaine C. Smith, Sanjeev Kohli and Sally Magnusson, and politicians Vince Cable, Alan Johnson, Catherine Mayer, Chris Mullen and Roy Hattersley, while David Hayman will perform plays by Chris Dolan.
Also appearing are Jenni Murray, The Reverend Richard Coles, Matthew Parris, Joanna Trollope, Miranda Sawyer, MC Beaton, Ms MacDermid, AL Kennedy, Denise Mina and the BBC’s Frank Gardner.
December 10, 2016
Val McDermid: ‘I needed to be extremely leftwing to get a rise out of anybody in our house’
Interview by Donna Ferguson
The day after I was born, I was taken off to an isolation hospital. My parents had both had TB and there was a concern that I might develop it myself. So I spent the first three months of my life in hospital, 30-odd miles away from where my parents lived in Kirkcaldy. There was no bus service and my parents didn’t have a car, so they only managed to visit once in that time. When my mother saw me, she didn’t recognise me. She just walked straight past me.
We’re Scottish! We don’t talk about our emotions
All her life, I think my mum tried to love me in the way she knew she ought to – she tried to make herself feel that absolute bond that you’re supposed to have between mother and child. But we didn’t have that intimacy. A few months before she died, she said – almost in passing – “I always thought we never bonded properly, because we were separated when you were born.” That was the first time she’d ever directly addressed it. We’re Scottish! We don’t talk about our emotions.
Read the full article on the Guardian website…
November 29, 2016
McDermid, Cornwell, Hawkins star in BBC documentary Serial Killers
by Katherine Cowdrey
Picture: BBC/Kev Robertson
The BBC is airing a new documentary on BBC One tonight (29th November) about women who write crime fiction, featuring prominent crime writers Val McDermid, Patricia Cornwell, Martina Cole, husband-and-wife author team Nicci French, Sarah Phelps and Paula Hawkins in interview with presenter Alan Yentob.
The aim of the programme “Serial Killers: The Women Who Write Crime Fiction” is to explore why – with 21 billion crime novels sold last year – the readers of crime are mostly women and more often than not, are the writers too. The same riddle earlier this year sparked the launch of a new women’s crime festival in London, Killer Women, set up by a collective of female crime writers including Hawkins.
The BBC’s programme begins with an introduction to the study of forensics and continues in a series of interviews with the authors, and with one editor, Trapeze’s Sam Eades, as well as with forensic professionals actively dealing with cases, such as Professor Sue Black who has been assisting McDermid with her research for 20 years.
Read the full article on the Bookseller website
November 28, 2016
Forensics Wins Award
2016…Winner of – Anthony Award for Best Critical/Non-Fiction book at Bouchercon in New Orleans.
McDermid, Val. Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime. Grove. 2015. 320p. ISBN 9780802123916. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780802191052. CRIME
Using historical examples, author McDermid brings to life the various subspecialties within forensic science to show how, and how well, the theories work in practice. The distinct treatment—one chapter on entomology, the next on pathology, and so on—and the juxtaposition within the chapters of histories and case studies produces the experience of reading an introductory forensic science textbook, minus all the colorful photos and elucidative marginalia. While this might leave academic readers feeling shortchanged, average readers will be more than satisfied with a no-frills primer. Additionally, McDermid’s experience as a crime writer and former journalist allows her to present the facts of the individual illustrative cases in compelling ways. Currency of the material is ensured through the use of recent court cases and consultation with practicing forensic scientists.
VERDICT: This title will primarily be relevant to readers with a general interest in forensic science/criminalistics, casual academics, true crime aficionados, and fans of McDermid’s other works.(LJ 6/15/16)—Ricardo Laskaris, York Univ. Lib., Toronto
Click here for more information about this book…
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