I wanted to finish this journal/blog off with a few of , what I consider, highlights from the past year.
January
DEADLINE TODAY!
£1750 POUNDS RAISED SO FAR..DEADLINE FOR DONATIONS 31 JANUARY 2005!
On 19 January 2005 Blackstaff Press put on an evening of the arts in aid of the Tsunami Disaster Appeal at The John Hewitt bar on Donegall Street, Belfast.
February
eaten our words
To a Fault - Nick Laird.
In this impressive debut, Nick Laird explores the sharp edge of relationships, from the intimacy of lovers to the brutality of political violence. Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, he balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Formally deft, rhetorically fresh, these poems never shy from difficult choices, exploring cruelty and vengeance wherever they may be found: in love, in work and against political backdrops. But these are brave, resolute writings that resist despair at all times, affirming instead the need to rebuild and to right oneself, to dust down and carry on.
March
Bollywoodpunk
The BSFA awards are presented annually by the British Science Fiction Association, based on a vote of BSFA members and – in recent years – members of the British national science fiction convention (Eastercon).BSFA awards for 2004The BSFA Awards for 2004 were presented on Saturday 26 March 2005 in a ceremony at the Eastercon, Paragon 2, in Hinckley, Leicestershire. The ceremony was MC'd by John Jarrold, and the awards were made by BSFA co-chair Elizabeth Billinger.
Best Novel - River of Gods - Ian McDonald.
April
Book of the month - website of the day
Portadown News: The Best Bits - Newton Emerson
The Portadown News is the most scurrilous, offensive publication which I find absolutely necessary to read every week.Mark Devenport, BBC Northern Ireland Political Editor.
May
spent a very pleasant journey home reading a book by a man who wasn't me
I arrived at a bookshop that wasn't open the other day, to sign a book that wasn't there.Mind you, it was in Dublin, where there are quite a few things that aren't there, or at least weren't a minute ago: they're rebuilding the city so fast that workers often go home on the Friday and come in on the Monday to find that their office has been replaced by a car park.
June
The Unlikely Poet
1999
Irish poet challenges vision of the stereotype or . . .
Although we know we should never stereotype, the common vision most have of a poet includes the belief that he or she must be introspective and shy. Therefore, it just doesn’t seem right to meet a poet who once hung out with a gang of thugs in a tough Northern Ireland neighborhood. Nor does it seem right to meet one that was one of his local town’s First-Fifteen rugby players and often earned his living by being a barman and a bouncer!
2005
Abbey Press editor and poet Adrian Rice has finished his Visiting Writer- in- Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne College, NC. However, he will be staying on to fulfill reading/lecture/workshop engagements with Chapel Hill, Duke, NC State and High Point Universities.
July
whats yours?
My Story
Everybody's got a story to tell, what's yours?
My Story is a writing project for 2005 in which people read their own autobiographical stories.
Source - http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/radioulster/shows/mystory.shtml
January
Eric Conn reads 'My Day'
Prince and I were the same age and that was five years old. I was a boy and he was a mongrel terrier and from the moment we met which was one night after an air raid we were inseparable. There would be no more air raids they told me, no more sirens, no more shivering at night in the old tin shed. No more German bombers overhead with their ghostly flares and their explosions.
August
Capture, Converge, Create
Hey ya'll. I've decided to start a separate travel blog for my month in Belfast. I probably wont have time to cross post, so if you wanna know what's going on, the address is http://mcalka.iweb.bsu.edu/northernireland.html
source - http://www.livejournal.com/users/firesetterninja.
September
Thank you, Mr McNicholl
Damian McNicholl
I'm from Northern Ireland, attended law school in Cardiff, Wales, worked in London, and came to the US in the nineties where I slaved as an underpaid attorney while teaching myself to write fiction on the commute to Long Island and then NYC. After a lot of approaches to agents, followed by a crop of alternately florid, stupid or deliciously encouraging passes from publishers, my first novel A Son Called Gabriel was taken, got a great cover slapped on its hardback, and beat a path to the bookshelves.
October
Belfast came up with the Titanic, the Troubles, the car bomb, kneecapping, Ulster fries and big fucken sinks
Troubles to be satirised in new novel.
The Northern Ireland Troubles are to be laid bare in a satirical new novel in which the protagonist assassinates politicians and paramilitary leaders with the acquiescence of state officials. Woundlicker is the first novel by former journalist Jason Johnson, who has covered many of the killings in Northern Ireland.
November
looking forward to . . .
CREATIVE WRITERS NETWORK LITERARY CONFERENCE 2005
Ormeau Baths Gallery,Ormeau Avenue, Belfast
'A Nest Of Singing Birds'
Creative Writers Network is hosting the first ever literary conference and exhibition in the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Ormeau Road, Belfast on Friday 2nd (7-9pm) and Saturday 3rd (9.30am-5.30pm) December 2005. The topic of the conference will focus on ‘The Historical role of Literary Art in Northern Ireland: The impact of Literary Art in Northern Ireland and the impact of Northern Irish Literary Art Worldwide’.
December
myth and story tale
.............. just a few concluding thoughts.
My favourite Best story was told to me second hand by my old mate Bernard on Saturday night. It is from the Swiss German woman who opened the whole food shop in Holywood back in the mid eighties. If I get some details wrong, it’s due to the lateness of the hour and the fact it was told to me some time after my third pint in Neds.One day, not long after opening the shop.
source - Slugger O'Toole http://www.sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/best_of_times_and_the_worst/
I'll continue to blog @ "the Bog Standard Blog" so please feel free to call anytime (where comments are always welcome).
Finally I'd like to wish you all a "Happy and Prosperous New Year".
CyberScribe
31.12.05
to be continued ...
27.12.05
The new book picks up where her last novel left off
Anne Doughty is clear about the role of fiction in that it must stimulate as well as entertain. ‘At the end of a book you should know something better than you did before. You should know something of yourself better than you did before.’
On December 31, 2005 Severn House will publish The Hawthorns Bloom in May, the next instalment in Doughty’s series.When this series is completed, she will have followed the lives of an Ulster family from 1861 to 1961. Such an undertaking requires a great deal of research and she is no stranger to the libraries and archives of Northern Ireland.
Despite being born and raised in the province, ironically it was whilst in England that her education into the history of Northern Ireland became well-developed. Married to a historian she began on a self-imposed programme of education to ‘remedy her ignorance of her own country.’A dedicated attention to detail is evident in all of her books which can be read as much for their coverage of social history as the characters whose lives are thus affected. Major historical events are covered such as the sinking of the Titanic and the Armagh Rail Disaster of 1889, which claimed 88 lives and was at the time the worst in Europe.During this period Doughty reflected a great deal on her home in the Armagh countryside which only served to increase her affection for the place. For Doughty success in her work is very simple: ‘If I can do one small thing, it’s to show people there is a lot of good here.’
And the message is getting across. Doughty has fans as far away as North America and Australia, many of whom have Irish roots and suffer from what the author calls a ‘longing for a certain contact with Ireland’. Her work has also been translated into French and German for those foreign markets. However, it is at home that she has had the greatest impact.In 2004, there were 60,000 readers of Doughty’s books in UK libraries. While there are no such figures for borrowing in the US, she has heard of American tourists asking for her work by name in bookshops here, enviable success for someone who had never intended to be an author.
A geographer by training, it was after a project with her husband, Peter Doughty, that she began taking writing more seriously. ‘I was writing as a little girl but assumed it was something you grew out of,’ she said.‘When my husband and I married we were both teachers and worked on a series of educational books. When we finished the project I was desolate with no book to write and my husband convinced me to write a novel. I was sure I would never write fifty thousand words, which was the standard for a short novel, but in the end it was one hundred and fifty thousand words.’
As well as being a passionate fan of both JK Rowling and JRR Tolkein she also enjoys the works of Alexander McCall Smith and Jane Austen. Such authors are not only many years apart but also very different in content. Or not, it seems to Anne Doughty.She appreciates the grandiose fantasy of Tolkein and Rowling exploring the big themes of good versus evil in their sprawling invented worlds. She sees similar traits in Austen and McCall Smith who present our world as they see it. There is a power in the detail of the everyday that can often say a great deal. Employing her imagination to write about a past foreign to her, there still needs to be that connection with the characters for the story to work. ‘At the beginning I was educating, it’s the teacher in me, but then I caught myself on. The story needs to carry the weight of the message.
A friend who works in Armagh always thinks of the books when travelling in the area. He looks around for fragments of the world in the books.’Doughty is currently researching the 1920s for her next novel but is undaunted by the task. ‘I have the characters and, as my husband says, in my books it is they who drive the story.’ With an intimate knowledge of characters that she has developed over a number of years there are clear parallels with the authors mentioned above.With the fruits of her dedicated research into the history of Ulster and these well-developed characters that everyone can relate to, there is clearly a lot for the reader to learn in the works of Anne Doughty.
The Hawthorns Bloom in May is available in hardback from December 31 and the paperback edition will be produced by Blackstaff Press in May 2006. The other two books in the series are The Woman from Kerry and The Hamiltons of Ballydown.
Frazer Orr
source - Culture Northern Ireland
23.12.05
a selection of short stories and poetry
Writers' Groups is a new section of Get Writing which aims to showcase a selection of different works from a chosen writers' group on a monthly basis.This months featured writers group is The Waterside Theatre Writers' Group who have submitted a selection of short stories and poetry all with a common theme - 'Christmas'.
The Christmas Lout
Quality Street and Roses
There’s turkey and there’s stuffing;
I’ve refused the Irish Coffee
I lay there just imagining
As for sleep – forget about it!
I nipped quickly to the kitchen
I made a turkey sandwich,
It’s not right to try and diet
Myra Canning
source - BBC Get Writing N.I.
21.12.05
you CAN talk, you CAN compromise and everyone CAN win so there is no loser
Gary Mitchell was born in Rathcoole, North Belfast in 1965 and left Rathcoole Secondary School at the age of fifteen. In 1990 he wrote his first radio play, which won a BBC Radio 4 Young Playwrights Festival Award, and in 1995 became the first Protestant and first person from Northern Ireland to win the Stewart Parker Award. In 1998, IN A LITTLE WORLD OF OUR OWN won the Irish Times Theatre Award for best new play and was performed for the Abbey Theatre's first ever visit to the Lyric, Belfast. Also in 1998, Gary won the Belfast Drama Award for IN A LITTLE WORLD OF OUR OWN and SINKING, and was made Writer in Residence at the Royal National Theatre, London. He has gone on to win the Pearson Best New Play prize for TRUST, and for THE FORCE OF CHANGE both the George Devine Award and the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright.
FILM & TV:
2004 SEXTON 2 x 60' episodes in progress
Straight Face Productions / BBC Northern Ireland
2003/4 ENERGY
Feature adaptation of own play, at treatment stage
World Productions / FilmFour
2003/4 FEUD1 x 120
TV film in progress.
BBC Northern Ireland
2003/4 THE FORCE OF CHANGE
3 x 60 series in progress.
BBC Northern Ireland
2003 SUFFERING
Short film. Writer and Director Producer: Tony Rowe
Straight Face Productions / BBC Northern Ireland
* Best Short Film, Belfast Film Festival.
2001/02 AS THE BEAST SLEEPS
Single TV Film.Producer: Tony Rowe. Director: Harry Bradbeer
London Film Festival: 14/11/01 (NFT2) & 16/11/01 (Ritzy) BBC2 Transmission: Sunday 3rd Feb 02, 10pm. BBC Northern Ireland / BBC2* Screened at Edinburgh Film Festival 2001, and at Edinburgh Showcase in New York. Will also show at London, Montreal, Belfast, Wales, Gothenburg, Boston & New York Festivals. At London Film Festival on 14th and 16th November 01, and on LFF UK tour.* Third Place, Prix Europa 2002* Winner, Belfast Arts Award for Television 2002
2000/01 ONCE UPON A TIME IN BELFAST
Original feature script. DNA Films
1998 AN OFFICER FROM FRANCE
Broadcast November 1998. Starring Adrian Dunbar
.
RTE 1998 RED, WHITE AND BLUE
Documentary. Broadcast January 1998.,
BBC1 / Brian Waddell Productions
THEATRE:
2005 UNTITLED NEW PLAY
Royal Court Theatre
2003 DECEPTIVE IMPERFECTIONS
North Face Theatre Company, Belfast
2003 SPLINTERS
Script in progress
Tricycle Theatre
2003 LOYAL WOMEN
For production November 2003. Director: Josie Rourke Royal Court Downstairs
2002 REMORSE
Abbey Theatre, Dublin
2001 AS THE BEAST SLEEPS27th April - 19th May 2001
Lyric Theatre, Belfast2001 AS THE BEAST SLEEPS18th September - 20th October 01
Directed by John Sheehan
Tricycle Theatre, London
2001 MARCHING ON Tour of Scotland 29 March - 12th May.
7:84 Theatre Company
2000 THE FORCE OF CHANGE Royal Court Downstairs November 2000Royal Court Upstairs April 2000* Winner of Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright. * Joint winner of the George Devine Award* Nominated for a South Bank Show Award
2000 MARCHING ON Lyric Theatre, Belfast
2000 CONVICTIONS: 'HOLDING CELL'One of 7 short plays performed in Crumlin Road Courthouse, Belfast.Tinderbox Theatre Company* Winner of ESB Irish Times Best Production Award
1999 ENERGY The Playhouse, Londonderry
1999 TRUST Royal Court Upstairs & Eureka Theatre, San Francisco* Winner of Pearson Best Play of the Year award
1998 AS THE BEAST SLEEPS National Theatre Society /Abbey Theatre, Dublin
1998 TEARING THE LOOM Lyric Theatre, Belfast
1997 IN A LITTLE WORLD OF OUR OWN Abbey Theatre / Lyric Belfast /National Theatre Society /Abbey Theatre, Dublin / Donmar Theatre, London* Winner of Irish Theatre's Best New Play Award, 1997* Winner of Belfast Arts Drama Award, 1998
1997 SINKING Replay Theatre CompanyTheatre in Education*Winner of Belfast Arts Drama Award 1998
1995 THAT DRIVING AMBITION Replay Theatre CompanyTheatre in Education
ALTERNATIVE FUTURE
EXODUS
SUSPICIOUS MINDS
INDEPENDENT VOICE
RADIO:
2001 AS THE BEAST SLEEPS
Script in progress
BBC RADIO 4
1996 DRUMCREE
BBC RADIO 4* Shortlisted for Sony Award
1995 POISON HEARTS
BBC RADIO 4
1995 STRANDED
BBC RADIO 3
1995 INDEPENDENT VOICE (repeat broadcast) BBC RADIO 4* Winner of Stewart Parker Award (BBC Radio Drama), 1994
1991 THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL BBC RADIO 4* Award winner, Young Playwrights' Festival
PUBLICATIONS
THE FORCE OF CHANGE, TRUST and TEARING THE LOOM & IN A LITTLE WORLD OF OUR OWN (one volume) are all published by Nick Hern Books.
source - PFD
Celebrate artists, don't burn them like Lundy
It is a terrible thing to hear of a child so scared he says to his mother, "I'm going to die, amn't I?" This is what Alison Mitchell's seven-year-old said to her after men petrol bombed their home in Glengormley two weeks ago. She was terrified her son might be right. Her father-in-law, Chuck, took a heart attack. Alison's husband, Gary, ran after the attackers but they got away. The family was told to get out of the area and they are now staying with relatives.
Chuck and his wife had already been intimidated out of their home in Rathcoole. The thugs who did this would call themselves loyalists but this wasn't the usual sectarian intimidation of a Catholic family out of a Protestant area.
Gary Mitchell is a Protestant. He is a writer. He has, in a series of excellent and award-winning plays and films, given a voice to the angry men of loyalism. He has presented their dilemmas to the world and demanded that they be understood. He is passionately committed to his own people.
When I interviewed him for my book Northern Protestants – An Unsettled People in 1998, I asked him why he was so determined to stay in the place he'd grown up. He was already a highly respected dramatist and had been appointed writer in residence at the National Theatre in London. Unmarried then, he was living with his parents in Rathcoole, flying to London only when necessary. "Why should I leave?" he replied. "It is important for me to stay here and keep in touch with the people I'm in touch with. If you are not aware of how things are changing, you'll lose the detail and you'll write a lot of nonsense."
At the same time, a community worker in Rathcoole talked to me about how she was in high demand to sit on management committees for local groups because funding agencies required professional people to be involved. "In Protestant areas those people have cleared off," she said. "Our ones leave and don't look back." She also talked about destructive ways of thinking among working-class Protestants, defeatism and apathy. "There is also this thing of wanting to drag people down. You know. 'Who does he think he is? What would he know anyway.'"
Mitchell said he felt he'd been "psychologically damaged before I was born". He talked about what he'd learned at school. "How to talk my way out of difficult situations. How to take punches and kicks. How to get up and walk away." He hated it. Later on, he spoke to a careers teacher about wanting to be a writer. The response? "Well you can forget about that for a start." The teacher told the teenager he had no choice and no chance and then how to go and sign on the dole.
The painter, Dermot Seymour, who is from the Shankill Road, told me that being a Northern Protestant for him was "like having no head, in the sense that your are not allowed to think – there is this constant putting each other down so that no one moves. It is a world of inferiority complex." There was a "pride in being ignorant". An artist got slagged off as a homosexual. If you were different, you were 'a Lundy'. Lundy was the Protestant governor who proposed a "timely capitulation" to end the 1688 siege of Derry. He was driven out as a traitor.
Mitchell was on the dole for years, doing 'murky' things. When he did a drama course, his peers said acting was for "Taigs and faggots". However, he forged his path. "I made the journey through violence and out the other end. I learned that you CAN talk, you CAN compromise and everyone CAN win so there is no loser." This is a lesson loyalists have been trained by their political leaders NOT to learn.
In one of Mitchell's plays, a politician tells a paramilitary lieutenant to speak to the foot soldiers about knocking off the violence. He replies: "They don't talk. They don't listen. They follow orders. I made them that way." Mitchell has eloquently explained the mindset of those who turned on him. One of his plays is called In a Little World of Our Own. Another is As the Beast Sleeps. Artists like him should be celebrated by their people and supported by all of us. Not burned and banished. They burned Lundy in Derry last weekend. They do it every year.
(Susan McKay, Irish News) December 7, 2005
source - Newshound
Loyalist paramilitaries drive playwright from his home
One of the most talked about voices in European theatre is in hiding - and his extended family have been forced to flee their homes - after a campaign of death threats and bomb attacks by loyalist paramilitaries.
Gary Mitchell, whose political thrillers have arguably made him Northern Ireland's greatest playwright, was told that every "Mitchell had to get out or be killed in four hours". His home was attacked by men with baseball bats and petrol bombs.
Brought up on the sprawling Rathcoole estate in north Belfast which is dominated by the UDA, Mitchell is the authentic voice of working class loyalism, whose plays, including As the Beast Sleeps and the Force of Change, have shocked audiences in London and New York with the ugly truth about how paramilitary thugs still control their communities long after "peace".Remarkably, while critics raved at the way he dramatised feuds and power-struggles within loyalists gangs, and the collusion between gunmen and the police, he managed to continue living on the same streets where they held sway.
Despite police warnings that he was on the top of a death list - and should not drink in local pubs - Mitchell insisted on staying put, saying he needed to be close to the people he was writing about.To begin with, the paramilitaries' prejudice that culture was something only for "taigs and faggots" protected him. But after his acclaimed As The Beast Sleeps was filmed by the BBC, and he began to win international prizes, it began to get serious. One UDA leader told the makers they could only film on the estate if they didn't use cameras.
Last month, Mitchell's home was attacked by paramilitaries carrying baseball bats, their faces hidden by football scarves. His car was petrol bombed and exploded in his driveway. His wife, Alison, grabbed their seven-year-old son from his bed, ran outside with him, put him over a wall and threw herself on top of him to protect him. She said: "I heard an explosion and I thought they've killed Gary."There was a simultaneous attack on his uncle's home. By then his uncle was the only family member left in Rathcoole.
From a secret location, Mitchell told the Guardian: "We are in hiding now. I feel a mix of confusion, anger, frustration and despair. There is a feeling that certain people are jealous and feel that I am depicting them in a bad way. They have decided that they will do this no matter what anybody says ... I haven't done anything other than write."Some say the way to deal with this is to sit down with paramilitaries and ask them why they are doing this. I have no interest in doing that because I don't want to give people authority over my writing. If I negotiated with them, I would be recognising their authority, which I don't."Mitchell's pensioner parents were the first to feel the intimidation when they were told: "All the Mitchells have four hours to leave Rathcoole or they will be killed." Sandra and Chuck Mitchell had lived in their home for 50 years, but had to leave. His father is now in hospital.
Mitchell's grandmother, Sadie, was allowed to stay alone in a small flat. She died five months later.The Mitchells were told they could not return to Rathcoole for the funeral. "We had to have a police escort. My granny always wanted to be buried from her house. That had to be changed because police said it wasn't safe. When they were taking the coffin out, a man shouted: 'One Mitchell dead!' These are the sorts of things you don't forget."
Tommy Kirkham of the Ulster Political Research Group, which advises the UDA, said he had been assured the UDA was not behind the attacks. Mitchell has been told rogue elements may have targeted him.The Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson has organised an open letter in support of Mitchell with 30 other writers.
Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Wednesday December 21, 2005
source - Guardian Unlimited
15.12.05
bringing the Arts out into the real world
source - the manifesto
The Knights of the Round Table
The Knights of the Round Table are a unique literary organization dedicated to the furtherance and celebration of the Arts. The Knights are open to anyone with a passion for the Arts, and it is a chief aim and pleasure of the group to not only encourage the individual development of all the artistic genres, but to also encourage the idea of bringing separate genres together. Therefore the group contains musicians and composers, writers and poets, painters and sculptors, etc.
It is an intention of The Knights to produce a significant body of creative output that will influence many or all of the artistic fields. As the group’s Manifesto makes clear, The Knights are all about Imaginative Art, and prefer to leave Realism to others.The organization also promotes the notion that heightened states of Hedonism may be attained through Art. The Knights view Art as something that exists to be enjoyed. It is a golden rule of the group to aim at bringing the Arts out into the real world instead of leaving it floundering in the dusty lecture hall of the college or university. Any work that a scholar puts into study of Art should not be merely for the sake of doing an arduous chore; it should be to move him or her towards greater understandings and insights, and ultimately to greater pleasures.
The organization is run by an Inner Circle who co-ordinate the activities of the overall group, which includes this Circle itself, the Outer Associates of the group, and the wider group of General Members. Information on the members of the Inner Circle (which had remained secret until June 2003) and Outer Associates will be found in the relevant section on this web-site.
The Inner Circle meet in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but actual membership of the group is not limited to city, country, age, sex, or any such factor.
source - The Knights of the Round Table
12.12.05
the "new JK Rowling" ?
Book deal for spare-time writer
A Belfast mother of three who volunteers at her local parent and toddler group and writes in her spare time has won a book deal in a competition to find the "new JK Rowling". Sarah Wray was picked from 3,500 hopefuls who entered The Wow Factor, a new writing competition launched by Waterstone's and the publisher Faber. Her entry, The Forbidden Room, is the disturbing tale of a teenage girl, Jenny, who is left orphaned and disabled after a car accident, and is fostered by a family who lost their elder two children to a genetic disease. Gradually, she discovers that the family is not quite what it seems, until finally she finds herself facing a life-or-death dilemma. Wray studied genetics at the University of Belfast; and the central plotline, which tackles the ethics of curing sick children with controversial new techniques, draws on her scientific knowledge.
The judges for the competition included Fern Britton and Phillip Schofield of ITV's This Morning. "Sarah is a great story teller, and The Forbidden Room is a terrific read from beginning to end with its unlikely mix of orphans, disability, teenage love, pottery and illegal gene therapy!" they said of the winning story. "It's a slow-burn thriller that manages to be sensitive to the subjects it deals with while also being thought-provoking."
Wray, 36, has worked in a medical research lab, taught science, childminded and done a stint on a supermarket checkout. She began writing seriously six years ago. With little success until now, she says that becoming a published writer is the fulfillment of a lifetime ambition. "When I'm not writing, a lot of the time I'm thinking about my book and wishing I was writing," she said. "I want to write for children, because many of my favourite books are children's books, and I think that children and young people think about and feel things deeply, sometimes more so than adults who are a bit tired and jaded."
The Forbidden Room will be published by Faber in September 2006 and will be supported by a high-profile campaign in Waterstone's bookshops. The other 12 finalists on the shortlist, which included a 16-year-old Derbyshire schoolgirl, a 52-year-old teacher from Ealing and a 45-year-old journalist from Somerset, will all receive detailed feedback on their manuscripts.
Michelle Pauli
source - guardian.co.uk
Is Belfast mum next JK Rowling?
A Belfast mother-of-three could become the next JK Rowling after securing her first book deal. Sarah Wray fended off competition from 3,500 would-be writers to land a publishing contract for a children's book. The Finaghy woman scooped top prize in the WOW Factor writing competition launched by Waterstone's and Faber and Faber.
Her manuscript, The Forbidden Room, will be published next September and promoted in stores throughout UK and Ireland. The book centres on a teenage girl, Jenny, who is left orphaned and disabled after a car accident and lives in a care home until she is fostered. But she soon realises her foster family is hiding a secret and when she discovers diaries written by a previous foster child, she is about to unlock the shocking truth.
Sarah began writing seriously six years ago and already has six books under her belt. However, this is the first one to be published. It was her daughter who spotted a poster about the competition in Waterstone's, Belfast, and encouraged her mum to enter. Sarah said: "I was shocked and stunned when I got the call to tell me I'd won. I'd been counting down the days to the deadline. "I'm so excited about winning, being a published author is a dream come true for me, the fulfilment of a life-time's ambition, but I really hope that this is just the start of a long career as a writer. "My family are extremely proud of my success, although my children are most excited about the trip to Alton Towers I'm planning with the prize money!"
The judging panel that selected Sarah Wray as the winner from the 13 regional finalists included ITV's This Morning presenters Fern Britton and Phillip Schofield, New York Times List best-selling author GP Taylor and author Anna Dale. Phillip Schofield said: "Sarah is a great story teller and The Forbidden Room is a terrific read from beginning to end with its unlikely mix of orphans, disability, teenage love, pottery and illegal gene therapy."
Sarah moved to Belfast from Merseyside in 1988 to study genetics and since graduating has worked in a medical research laboratory, as a science teacher, childminder and on a supermarket checkout. Now she runs a parent and toddler group but spends her spare time writing. She said: "When I'm not writing, a lot of the time I'm thinking about my book and wishing I was writing. "I want to write for children, because many of my favourite books are children's books, and I think that children and young people think about and feel things deeply, sometimes more so than adults who are a bit tired and jaded with life."
The Forbidden Room competed with many manuscripts to win the top prize, including those submitted by a 16-year-old Derbyshire schoolgirl, a 45-year-old IT consultant from Bournemouth, an unemployed graduate from Leeds and a 52-year-old teacher from Ealing. Angela McGrath of Waterstone's in Belfast, where Sarah handed in her manuscript, said they were thrilled she had won. "We loved her manuscript and are immensely proud that she not only won her regional heat but then went on to win the whole competition as well," she said. "This is a fantastic achievement and we can't wait until next September to begin sharing her book with our customers."
source -BBC
She may be the new JK Rowling and she's from Belfast
A Belfast mother-of-three has been plucked from thousands of would-be JK Rowlings to be the next big thing in the lucrative world of children's fiction. Sarah Wray (36), is set to become a major name after outdoing 3,500 budding writers to win a life-changing book deal in a competition backed by leading lights in the publishing industry. The manager of a toddlers group is to have her manuscript The Forbidden Room published by Faber and Faber in September 2006 after winning the WOW Factor new talent search. The launch will be supported by a high profile promotional campaign which includes a prime position for her book at the front of every branch of Waterstone's in the UK and Ireland.
The former supermarket check-out worker said she was "shocked and stunned" when an influential judging panel tipped her as the name of the future in children's literature. "I'd been counting down the days to the deadline. I'm so excited about winning, being a published author is a dream come true for me, the fulfilment of a life-time's ambition, but I really hope that this is just the start of a long career as a writer," she said. "My family are extremely proud of my success, although my children are most excited about the trip to Alton Towers I'm planning with the prize money." Sarah only began writing seriously, every day, six years ago and has written six books to date, none of them published until now. She said she had her daughter to thank for spotting a poster about the competition in Waterstone's on Fountain Street in Belfast and encouraging her to enter.
After passing the Northern Ireland heat she was chosen from 13 regional finalists from a panel including ITV's 'This Morning' presenters Fern Britton and Phillip Schofield. Best-selling author GP Taylor and Waterstone's bookseller and successful children's author Anna Dale were also among the judges. "Sarah is a great story teller and The Forbidden Room is a terrific read from beginning to end with its unlikely mix of orphans, disability, teenage love, pottery and illegal gene therapy," said Phillip Schofield. "It is a slow burn thriller that manages to be sensitive to the subjects it deals with whilst also being thought provoking."
Originally from Merseyside, Sarah moved to Belfast in 1988 to study Genetics at Queen's University, and has lived in the city since. She runs a local parent and toddler group and spends any spare time she has writing. "When I'm not writing, a lot of the time I'm thinking about my book and wishing I was writing," she said. "I want to write for children, because many of my favourite books are children's books, and I think that children and young people think about and feel things deeply, sometimes more so than adults who are a bit tired and jaded with life."
Brian Hutton
source - Belfast Telegraph
10.12.05
to me blasphemy
CS Lewis feared film would ruin Narnia
CS Lewis, the author of the Narnia stories, with which Disney hopes to establish a blockbuster movie franchise to rival Harry Potter, was "absolutely opposed" to the idea of a live action version of the stories, it has emerged.The author made clear his distaste for the idea in a hitherto unpublished letter to a BBC producer with whom he collaborated on a radio version of The Magician's Nephew, chronologically the first in the much-loved series of fantasy tales which double as Christian allegory.In the letter, dated December 18 1959, Lewis made clear he approved of the radio version of the book produced by Lance Sieveking, a pioneering BBC radio and television producer.
But in letters written shortly before the death of his wife, Joy, Lewis also said he was "absolutely opposed - adamant isn't in it! - to a TV version" of any of the books. "Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography," he wrote.
A cartoon version would be "another matter", he said. But Lewis, who died in 1963, added: "If only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius." In conclusion, he said that "a human, pantomime Aslan would to me be blasphemy".
Whether he would have thought differently had he foreseen the lavish special effects on which Disney would spend a large portion of the reported £85m the film took to make will be contested by fans on internet message boards devoted to the author and his work.The new Disney version, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, uses a computer-generated version of the noble lion Aslan, voiced by Liam Neeson. It also uses 1,700 special-effects shots and computer-generated sequences.
The marketing machine behind the film, which opens on December 8, has already swung into action. Disney has signed a string of tie-in deals with companies from Kodak to McDonald's, and more than 60 licences have been granted to manufacture everything from board games to replica swords.
Lewis's estate, partly overseen by his stepson Douglas Gresham, who co-produced the film, has to date been sparing in allowing broadcasters and film studios to develop projects based on the books. In 1988 the BBC was allowed to produce a well-received version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Film versions were mooted but never reached the screen until now.Mr Gresham finally entrusted the rights to Walden Media, the production outfit owned by the billionaire Christian financier and film producer Philip Anschutz, who enlisted Disney to finance the project.
The film is expected to be a hit on both sides of the Atlantic after winning the support of evangelical organisations drawn to its Christian message.The letter has remained in the possession of Mr Sieveking's son Paul, a founding editor of Fortean Times magazine, since his death in 1972. It finally came to light when his wife, Val Stevenson, posted it on Nthposition.com, the literary website of which she is editor.
Owen Gibson
source Guardian Unlimited
The Kilns,
(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.
All the best,yours
C. S. Lewis
[Letter to BBC producer Lance Sieveking (1896-1972), who has written at the top: ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and, after the address, the phone number “62963”.]
source - nthposition
5.12.05
myth and story tale
.............. just a few concluding thoughts.
My favourite Best story was told to me second hand by my old mate Bernard on Saturday night. It is from the Swiss German woman who opened the whole food shop in Holywood back in the mid eighties. If I get some details wrong, it’s due to the lateness of the hour and the fact it was told to me some time after my third pint in Neds.
One day, not long after opening the shop, it came to lunchtime and it being a pleasant summer’s day she decided to close the shop to have her lunch and read her book down by the shore at Seapark. When she got there, there was no about except a couple and their young boy playing on the beach. After a while they got talking, and the man asked her what she did. She told them about the shop at some length, and then with a pause in the conversation, she asked him what he did. He said “I don’t really do anything now, but I used to be a footballer”. She asked him his name. “George Best”, he said. “Oh”, she replied, “I don’t think I’ve heard of you”. Best smiled warmly saying, “You don’t know long it is since I last met someone who didn’t know me”. They said their goodbyes and the couple promised to look up the shop before leaving town. And sure enough, the three of them came in. Before they left, Best bought her complete stock of imported wooden toys, leaving her with twice her weekly takings in one transaction.
Several commentators remarked of the ceremony on Saturday that all the bad times of Best’s life were now forgotten. But I don’t think that’s true. The Greek origin of the word hero is “a man of superhuman qualities, favoured by the gods; a demigod”. It is also given as “the chief male character in a play” and “the idealisation of an admired man”. So much of what Best meant to the thousands of people who grieved him on Saturday, but who never knew him, was myth and story tale. The Greeks used their myths as cautionary, and morality tales. Only in the fairy stories we tell our youngsters must the hero win through in the end.
Mick Fealty
Farewell our friend, but not goodbye,
Your time has come, your soul must fly.
To dance with angels, find the sun,
But how we'll miss our special one.
He walks among us just a while,
Weaved your magic, made us smile.
Your life was so full of light and tears,
We lived it through you, through the years.
The golden days, they went so fast,
The precious times, why can't they last?
So many loved you, did you know?
We were not ready to let you go.
The stars from Heaven are only lent,
A gift from God, that's why they're sent.
We won't forget our Belfast boy,
He filled our lives with so much joy.
Your star will shine now in the sky,
Farewell our friend, but not goodbye.
Poem by Belfast woman Julie McClelland which was read by Best's son Calum at the funeral
source - Sunday Mail
