SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND PUBLISHED TODAY IN THE UK

SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND is published today in the UK by William Collins. In this adventurous blend of literature, history and memoir Cambridge scholar Edward Wilson-Lee traces a journey in search of the explorers, labourers, freedom fighters and tyrants who loved and fought over Shakespeare in East Africa over the centuries. Edward’s Shakespearean expertise and personal experience of the region make this a vivid and memorable read. 

2016 is a year of #Shakespeare400 celebrations, marking four centuries since the death of the great English poet and playwright. SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND has already attracted a great deal of pre-publication attention and been listed as one of the top books on Shakespeare to read this year. The Bookseller called it a 'striking literary debut' in its preview of the best forthcoming books for #Shakespeare400, The Times included it in their list of all things ‘Bardtastic’ to look out for, and The Financial Times also highlighted it as a book to read in 2016. In the US, where Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish in September 2016,  The Wall Street Journal featured it in their article on ‘The Coming Shakespeare Extravaganza’. 

As Matthew Reisz writes in Times Higher Education: 'There will be many books published to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Few will be bolder than SHAKESPEARE IN SWAHILILAND.’

In a series of clips Edward considers questions like “What would the world be like without Shakespeare?” and  why Antony & Cleopatra is (currently) his favourite Shakespeare play. 

International student publication The Day ran this piece by Edward on Shakespeare’s global impact he was interviewed for the World Service: Focus on Africa programme. He has already appeared at the Bath Literary Festival and London readers can book tickets for his forthcoming event at Stanford Travel Bookshop on 15 March. Many other festival appearances are scheduled, including:
29 April: Stratford upon Avon Literary Festival
13 July:  Dartington Ways with Words
7 November:  Bridport Literary Festival

See more on Edward’s website. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature and Shakespeare. After growing up in Kenya and Switzerland, he went to university in London, New York, Oxford and Cambridge, living briefly in Mexico and New Orleans in between. He is now working on a second book for William Collins.

Follow Edward on Twitter.

JANICE GALLOWAY AND PIPPA GOLDSCHMIDT LONGLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE

JELLYFISH by Janice Galloway and THE NEED FOR BETTER REGULATION OF OUTER SPACE by Pippa Goldschmidt are among the short story collections longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. The list was announced yesterday and includes many Scottish and Irish authors and a number of prize-winning writers like Ali Smith, China Miéville, Kate Clanchy and Marina Warner .

The Edge Hill Prize is awarded annually by Edge Hill University for excellence in a published single-author short story collection. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Prize and Ailsa Cox, Professor of Short Fiction and organiser of the Short Story Prize shared her excitement for the event and for the strong longlist of established names competing alongside relative newcomers.

A shortlist of six authors will be announced in May, and the winner announced on 5th July. Judges are last year’s winner, Kirsty Gunn; Cathy Galvin, Director of The Word Factory; and Edge Hill Creative Writing Lecturer, Billy Cowan.

About JELLYFISH:

JELLYFISH is a collection of short stories, published in the UK by Freight Books. Three stories from the collection were broadcast by BBC Radio 4, and the book has already been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize 2015.

Praise for JELLYFISH:

‘Foreboding floats through the fourteen tales … Reminiscent of Sylvia Plath in its black humour and visceral imagery … These deft short stories show why publishers should have more faith in the form … Exquisite similes and witty metaphors rise up and sting the senses like the eponymous jellyfish. With this electrifying volume Galloway proves herself a truly powerful writer who deserves to be much better known.’ – The Independent

‘An exquisite short-story collection … Previously very much a city writer, here the natural world encroaches on Galloway’s work from the title onwards, both indifferent and essential.’ – The Guardian

'This is a short story collection to savour, by one of the foremost Scottish writers of her generation.' – Irish Times

Visit Janice's website

About THE NEED FOR BETTER REGULATION OF OUTER SPACE:

In THE NEED FOR BETTER REGULATION OF OUTER SPACE, Pippa Goldschmidt brings together an outstanding collection of short stories on the theme of science and its impact on all our lives.

Praise for THE NEED FOR BETTER REGULATION OF OUTER SPACE:

'Definitions: 'scientist' – human being who wonders, tries, gets things wrong; 'science' – curiosity, wrapped in strange language and with odd-looking equipment; 'story' – what if, and then, and then. Pippa Goldschmidt mixes all of the above and the resulting compounds are sweet, funny, spicy, provocative, moving. Your universe will be expanded. It doesn't get any better than that.' – Tania Hershman, author of MY MOTHER WAS AN UPRIGHT PIANO 

'These stories, written with deep empathy and a bittersweet humour, open up a world where literature often fears to tread. Science is a tool for understanding the universe, but in Pippa Goldschmidt’s hands it is also a metaphor through which we can better understand ourselves. She is a writer of great heart and talent.' – Iain Maloney, author of FIRST TIME SOLO and SILMA HILL 

'Sharply imagined stories that glitter like a constellation: funny, sexy and moving by turns. There is a haunting, planetary loneliness at the heart of many of these tales, but they're told with energy, wit and unflagging inventiveness.' – Wayne Price, author of FURNACE and MERCY SEAT

'Pippa Goldschmidt is busy defining an entirely new kind of "science" fiction. These stories – all of which are superb exercises in tone and concision – are urgent dispatches from a territory almost completely ignored by contemporary authors – elegant fables that inhabit the intersection of science, culture, humanity, and which are thoroughly informed by a sharp understanding of both the secret histories and hidden processes of actual science.' – Alastair Reynolds, author or REVELATION SPACE and POSEIDON’S CHILDREN

Visit Pippa's website

Follow Pippa on Twitter: @goldipipschmidt

MY MOTHER’S SECRET by Sheila O’Flanagan published in ppbk by Headline tomorrow

Sheila O’Flanagan’s MY MOTHER’S SECRET is published in the UK in paperback by Headline tomorrow. The novel is already No. 1 in the Irish bestseller chart where it was published last week.

When Steffie helps her two siblings organize a surprise wedding anniversary party for their parents her only worry is whether they'll be pleased. What she doesn't know is this is the day that her whole world will be turned upside down.

Sheila’s first young adult novel THE CRYSTAL RUN, will be published in May as a lead hardback title for Hodder Children’s Books. Her 25th book for Headline, THE MISSING WIFE, is published in hardback in June.

Sheila is an ex-bond dealer and financial journalist whose novels have all been immediate No. 1 Irish bestsellers. Her books have been described as ‘as necessary to women as chocolate, and just as addictive!’ Her last three novels have sold in excess of 1,000,000 copies in their British editions. She was the recipient of the prestigious Irish Tatler Literary Woman of the Year award in 2003. When each publication, she breaks her record of weeks at No. 1. She is currently writing two more adult books for Headline and a follow up to THE CRYSTAL RUN for Hodder Children’s.

Praise for Sheila O’Flanagan

‘Sheila O’Flanagan never, ever disappoints.’ – Nancy Barnes, Gobshites and Eeijts

‘One of the most popular women’s fiction writers, very much in the same vein as Maeve Binchy, writing about families relationships and finding love.’ – Driffield Leader

‘O’Flanagan users her considerable skill as a writer to keep the reader absorbed throughout. Expect another huge success.’ – Irish News (Belfast)

KAITE O'REILLY'S DRAMA COLLECTION LAUNCHED TODAY

Atypical Plays For Atypical Actors is the first of its kind: a collection of dramas which redefines the notion of normalcy and extends the range of what it is to be human. From monologues, to performance texts, to realist plays, these involving and subversive pieces explore disability as a portal to new experience.

Includes the plays: Peeling, The Almond and the Seahorse, In Water I’m Weightless, the 9 Fridas and Cosy.

Although disabled characters appear often in plays within the Western theatrical tradition, seldom have the writers been disabled or Deaf themselves, or written from those atypical embodied experiences. This is what contributes to making Kaite O’Reilly’s Selected Plays essential reading – critically acclaimed plays and performance texts written in a range of styles over twelve years, but all informed by a political and cultural disability perspective. They ‘answer back’ to the moral and medical models of disability and attempt to subvert or critique assumptions and negative representations of disabled people.

The selected plays and performance texts exhibit a broad approach to issues around disability. Some, like In Water I’m Weightless/The ‘d’ Monologues (part of the Cultural Olympiad and official festival celebrating the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics) are embedded in disability politics, aesthetics, and ‘crip’ humour. A montage of monologues that can be performed solo or as a chorus, they challenge the normative gaze and celebrate all the possibilities of human variety.   The Almond and the Seahorse is different, a ‘mainstream’ character-led realist drama about survivors of Traumatic Brain Injury, with subversive politics in its belly. A response to ‘tragic but brave’ depictions of head injury and memory loss, and informed by personal experience, the play interrogates the reality of living with TBI, questioning who the ‘victims’ are.

Peeling, a landmark play written for one Deaf and two disabled female actors, was originally produced by Graeae Theatre Company in 2002, 2003, and for BBC Radio 3. A ‘feminist masterpiece…quietly ground breaking’ (Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman), it has become a set text for Theatre and Drama and Disability Studies university degree courses in the UK and US. Frequently remounted, its lively meta-theatrical form supports its central themes of war, eugenics, and a woman’s control over her fertility, which are as relevant today as ever.  

The performance text the 9 Fridas is a complex mosaic offering multiple representations of arguably the world’s most famous female artist, Frida Kahlo, reclaiming her as a disability icon. Performed in Mandarin translation, it was the closing production of the 2014 Taipei Art Festival and will transfer to Hong Kong in October 2016. It is currently being translated into German, Hindi, and Spanish. 

Cosy is a darkly comedic look at the joys and humiliations of getting older and how we shuffle off this mortal coil. Three generations of a dysfunctional family explore their choices in a world obsessed with eternal youth, and asks whose life (or death) is it, anyway?  An Unlimited Commission, Cosy will premiere and tour nationally in 2016, appearing at the Unlimited Festivals at Southbank Centre and Tramway.

‘At Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre, an all-female, all-Welsh cast including Sharon Morgan will perform Kaite O’Reilly’s new play Cosy; a provocative, brutally honest but at times laugh-out-loud work that asks big questions about how – and when – our lives draw to a close. It will then be performed as part of the Unlimited festivals in London and Glasgow, in September 2016. This darkly comic new work combines an unflinching examination of our attitudes to youth, ageing and death, with an often hilarious and moving encounter between three generations of women.' – The Disability Arts Online

Kaite O’Reilly was on BBC Radio Wales with Nicola Haywood Thomas on 17th February and was also interviewed by Joe Turnbull for an article appeared on 4th March on The Stage. Among the others, The Guardian also dealt with Kaite’s new play.

‘Kaite O’Reilly has always been a rule breaker… Her latest work Cosy… [is] ostensibly a traditional family drama encompassing three generations of women, which tackles the thorny issue of end-of-life scenarios and ageing.’ – Exeunt Magazine

THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE by Michiel Heyns praised by UK reviewers

Michiel Heyns’ thought-provoking and slyly witty novel THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE has been published by Freight Books in the UK and is winning over reviewers here, with a US deal to be confirmed soon.

Carefully researched and yet abundantly inventive, THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE brings to life a man – Henry James – who is the subject of literary interest worldwide. But unlike in other James-themed novels, Heyns does not make James the hero of the piece – the role of heroine is filled by the wonderful fictional character of his typist, Frieda Wroth. The novel won pre-publication praise – ‘delicious’, ‘breathtaking’, ‘admirable’ – from writers like Ronald Frame, Zoe Wicomb and Lyndall Gordon. Freight have published in the month of the centenary of Henry James’ death and early reviews are glowing.

 ‘Anyone who loves Henry James will adore THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE … Frieda is smart, funny, modern and intuitive and with her story, Heyns has given us something playful as well as thought-provoking’ – Lesley McDowell, The Independent on Sunday

‘A love of Henry James’ work is certainly not necessary to enjoy this novel … in tone it is light-hearted and entertaining. Heyns not only has fun with James and his family, but with a series of guest stars like Hugh Walpole, and Edith Wharton, who sweeps through the novel like a force of nature at regular points. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say we can’t have too many novels about Henry James, I am certainly glad we now have this one too.’ – 1stReading’s Blog

‘THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE is excellent and admirable, written in Jamesian style, but with lashings of the humour often lacking in the great man’s work … Heyns is a beautiful writer and it’s a measure of his talent that he apes James’s circumlocutions without stumbling. His images are vivid and apt. … Frieda provides the novel’s heart and its soul, and she is a lovely creation.’ – Lee Randall, A History of My life in 100 Objects blog

THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE slyly probes questions of love and art, creativity, immortality and the nature of a life fully lived. Michiel Heyns convincingly recreates the society in the town of Rye around ‘the Master’, as seen through the cool gaze of his typist, Frieda. Admiring of the great author, she nevertheless feels marginalised and under-valued, a mere typewriter, amidst the stolid servants and chattering guests. But when the dashing Morton Fullerton comes to visit, Frieda finds herself at the centre of an intrigue every bit as engrossing as the novels she types every day, bringing her into conflict with the flamboyant Edith Wharton, and compromising her loyalty to her employer.  The urbane, long-winded Henry James, the suave, witty Morton Fullerton and the voracious, larger-than life Edith Wharton: caught in a triangle of which she only gradually comes to understand the nature, Frieda tries to obey the Master’s dictum: ‘Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.’ But living, she finds, exacts a price: it takes place at the expense of other lives.

Michiel Heyns is a prize-winning novelist, translator and critic, one of South Africa’s leading literary lights and recipient of several international fellowships.. He is also Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Stellenbosch University and author of EXPULSION AND THE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVEL (OUP, 1994) as well as numerous articles, and radio adaptations of Henry James’ novels. All of his novels have been published in South Africa by Jonathan Ball and THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Africa Region. Freight will publish a further novel LOST GROUND in the UK in 2017

For more on Michiel’s novels, see his website.

More praise for THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE:

'...beams a brilliant light onto the world of Henry James, illuminating the language, manners and social mores of the early twentieth century. This exquisite account of the master and his amanuensis is a tour de force; her story, for all the confines of a typist's life in Rye, a triumph. Heyns is an important figure in South African letters; here he is profound and humorous. THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE is a breathtaking work and, above all, a pleasure to read.' Zoe Wicomb author of Playing in the Light and October

‘THE TYPEWRITER’S TALE is admirable for its Jamesian inwardness and delicacy. It’s a brilliant idea to explore the typewriter’s view of the great writer she serves and to imagine so plausibly how she is drawn into his world.’ Lyndall Gordon, author of Henry James: His Women and His Art

'What a great idea! The master-observer is observed by his stenographer. A delicious treat for Henry James aficionados, and also for those who may never have read a word. Sly, sympathetic, high-minded, involving, moving, funny. I loved it, and was very sorry to reach the last page. But Freida Wroth and Mr James and the other characters will live on in my mind.' Ronald Frame, author of The Lantern Bearers and Havisham