SLAY IN YOUR LANE: THE BLACK GIRL BIBLE, BY YOMI ADEGOKE AND ELIZABETH UVIEBINENÉ, IS OUT NOW!

The wait is finally over as Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené’s highly anticipated inspirational guide to life for young black women, SLAY IN YOUR LANE, is out today in hardback from Fourth Estate. Celebrating the achievements of black British women, SLAY IN YOUR LANE encourages readers to make lemonade out of lemons and find success in their careers, relationships, and in their lives.

In the run-up to publication, SLAY IN YOUR LANE, has been included in multiple best of lists, including The Observer’s ‘18 for 2018’, Elle’s ‘12 addictive books you have to read to get through in 2018’, Metro’s ‘best new books  in 2018’ and the BBC’s ‘hotly anticipated debut authors for 2018’. Mostly Lit’s Clarissa Pabi called it ‘a book I can genuinely say I've been waiting for’, and The Bookseller praise it as ‘a valuable framework to help navigate the murky world of working – and existing – while black and female’.

“Black women today are well past making waves we’re currently creating something of a tsunami. Women who look like us, grew up in similar places to us, talk like us, are shaping almost every sector of society.” 

From education to work to dating, this inspirational, honest and provocative book recognises and celebrates the strides black women have already made, while providing practical advice for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future.

Illustrated with stories from best friends Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke’s own lives, and using interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain including BAFTA Award-winning director Amma Asante, British Vogue publisher Vanessa Kingori and Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis, SLAY IN YOUR LANE is essential reading for a generation of black women inspired to find success in every area of their lives.

SLAY IN YOUR LANE will be Book of the Week next week (starting 9th July), on BBC Radio 4. You can read an interview with Yomi and Elizabeth and an extract from the book in The Times, here, and in The Observer, here.

Yomi Adegoke is an award-winning journalist and senior writer at The Pool. She writes about race, feminism, popular culture and how they intersect, as well as class and politics. In 2013 she founded Birthday Magazine, a publication aimed at black teenage girls, and this year was listed as one of the 200 Women Redefining the Creative Industry by The Dots. She was also named as a 'frontline pioneer' bringing the fight to 'a new generation', by the Evening Standard.

Elizabeth Uviebinené is a Brand Marketer from London; upon graduating from Warwick University with a Politics degree she has gone on to work for some of the biggest global brands in Finance, and was promoted to a Marketing Manager.

Visit the SLAY IN YOUR LANE Twitter page

Follow Yomi and Elizabeth on Twitter

Praise for SLAY IN YOUR LANE:

‘Hotly-anticipated… Best friends Yomi and Elizabeth decided to write the book because they realised there was a huge gap in the market - these were the stories they wanted to read about, so they decided to write it themselves. They also scatter in anecdotes from their own lives in their bid to tackle the challenges facing black women today, and plenty of advice.’ — Lauren Turner, BBC, Books look ahead 2018

‘In SLAY IN YOUR LANE, Adegoke and Uviebinene have created a valuable framework to help navigate the murky world of working – and existing – while black and female. It puts into words the amorphous, intangible feelings we walk around with and counters them with inspirational stories from industry leaders.’ — The Bookseller

‘What better choice for a summer read than this inspirational guide to life for the modern British black woman, promising to help you “make lemonade out of lemons, and find success in every area of your life”.’ — Elle, 12 Addictive Books You Have To Read To Get Through 2018

‘Quite literally a bible, this is the quintessential black woman’s guide to life for a generation of British women ‘inspired to make Lemonade out of lemons.’ Read Adegoke’s wisdom-filled essays on work, dating, beauty, representation, money, education and health and how being black and female affects each of these.’ — Melan Mag, Best titles by BME authors 2018

 ‘An inspiring read’ — Phoebe Hurst, The Pool

‘We could not put it down after reading the first page… a true insight into being a black woman in today’s Britain’ — BLACK BEAUTY MAGAZINE

‘As a young black British woman and an avid reader of books on personal development and success, this is a book I can genuinely say I've been waiting for, from at least when I discovered the genre a decade ago. I suspect many others have been waiting even longer, too…representative, thought-provoking, honest, humorous and inspirational. It recognises the waves and tsunamis black British women have already made, whilst providing practical advice and inspiration for slaying and succeeding even further, in your own way.’ — Clarissa Pabi, Waterstones Blog, Mostly Lit’s Must Reads

‘SLAY IN YOUR LANE is the black girl bible — an indispensable guide to living today…it’s provocative, uplifting, timely and important.’ — Netgalley, Top 10 Pick for July 

A STUNNING STORY SPANNING CENTURIES: THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY BY GREGORY NORMINTON IS PUBLISHED TODAY

Gregory Norminton’s THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY, a novel deeply rooted in place, is published today by Fourth Estate in hardback, ebook and audiobook. Gregory read an extract from the dazzling novel at a packed launch at Daunt Books’ in Holland Park last night. The paperback will follow in September 2018.

In December, Robert Macfarlane selected THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY as his book of the year for Resurgence magazine, calling it ‘a powerful meditation on the damages – and the good – we have wrought, and will wreak, on the living world.’ George Monbiot also commented on its importance in addressing environmental issues, saying, ‘it's brilliant. The best treatment of climate change in fiction I've come across. A powerful, essential novel.’

This weekend The Guardian’s M. John Harrison praised the novel for being ‘satisfyingly Alan Garnereseque…. …. reminiscent of Will Self’s THE BOOK OF DAVE or Russell Hoban’s RIDDLEY WALKER’, and in the TLS Jay Griffiths describes it as ‘profound and powerful, its prose moving to poetry. Gregory Norminton writes in language scraped down to its bleached bones – but how exquisitely he makes those bones sing.’

Set on one Roman road in three time periods over three thousand years, THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY is a breathtakingly original novel that challenges our dearly held assumptions about civilisation.

An ancient British boy, discovering a terrorist plot, must betray his brother to save his tribe. In the twenty-first century, two people – one traumatised by war, another by divorce – clash over the use and meaning of a landscape. In the distant future, a gang of feral children struggles to reach safety in a broken world. Their stories are linked by one ancient road, the ‘Devil’s Highway’ in the heart of England: the site of human struggles that resemble one another more than they differ.

In March, Gregory will be speaking alongside Rachel Lichtenstein about place in writing at a special event hosted by The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

Visit Gregory’s website here.

Follow Gregory on Twitter here.

Gregory Norminton is a novelist, actor, playwright, and environmental activist, born in 1976. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School. He has published five novels including SERIOUS THINGS and THE SHIP FOOLS, and two short story collections. Several short stories and dramatisations have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His most recent collection, THE GHOST WHO BLED was released by Comma Press last year.

Praise for THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY

‘Satisfyingly Alan Garnereseque…. …. reminiscent of Will Self’s THE BOOK OF DAVE or Russell Hoban’s RIDDLEY WALKER’ – M. John Harrison, The Guardian

 ‘It's brilliant. The best treatment of climate change in fiction I've come across. A powerful, essential novel.’ – George Monbiot

'A big, ambitious, beautifully written book that examines, with immense sympathy and generosity, one of the greatest of all themes, place, and our complex, fraught relationship with it.' – Neel Mukherjee

‘Norminton's novel is intriguing, a cautionary examination of man's capacity for violence and the effect on the world around him.’ – SciFi Now Magazine

‘It’s a brilliant deep-time meditation on how landscapes hold – and conceal – meanings. The novel’s stories are set across three points in time, but always in the same place (a Roman road – the highway of the title – crossing southern England). It’s a powerful meditation on the damages – and the good – we have wrought, and will wreak, on the living world.’ – Robert Macfarlane, Resurgence & Ecologist, Books of the Year

 ‘THE DEVIL’S HIGHWAY is held together by place, by the persistence and frailty of the natural world, and by the havoc wreaked on it by its human inhabitants. Spanning three civilisations and their conflictual relationship with the world in which they live, the novel is also a deeply human examination of the cruelties people inflict on one another, through war and need, and of the eventual possibility of love, the only defence against the destructive force of fire.’ – Charles Lambert author of Two Dark Tales

‘This is a work of staggering imagination, of unflinching acuity, powerful, poetic and profound. Telling the story of climate breakdown through language breakdown, it magnifies the meaning of loss, portraying a devastated culture without history or literature, whose language is down to its bleached bones and yet – how those bones sing.’ – Jay Griffiths, author of Wild: An Elemental Journey

‘Impressively binds three compelling tales of different times, to one piece of land, with sinews of poetry, history and a viscerally energetic imagination’ – Laline Paull, author of The Bees

‘A striking and dazzlingly poetic meditation on the resonance of place, conflict and kinship. . . . Norminton's skilfully-wrought novel is a memorable and thought-provoking read’ – Liz Jensen, author of The Rapture

Christopher Nicholson’s WINTER out in paperback today

Christopher Nicholson’s ‘moving, gripping and illuminating’ novel WINTER is published in paperback, with a stunning new cover, by Fourth Estate today.

The novel tells the story of the celebrated writer Thomas Hardy in later life, his second wife Florence and young actress Gertie, who played Tess of the D’Urbevilles in the stage version of the novel.

The novel has received fantastic reviews, with The Times calling it ‘pitch perfect… it is brave to set yourself up for comparison with an author as great as Hardy but this poetic and unashamedly literary book is good enough not to be embarrassed by the company it seeks to keep.’

The Mail on Sunday wrote ‘it is Hardy’s reflections on love and his impending death that linger longest and give the book its poignancy… WINTER is a memorable portrait of a failed marriage – but there are flashes of humour, too’ and the Guardian described it as ‘Prose of such quality that one does not notice the quality – to describe it as craftsmanlike doesn't do it justice. It is a prose beyond accomplishment, yet which refuses to astonish, and which is utterly appropriate.’

French rights to the novel have recently sold to La Table Ronde, and the book is also due to be published in the US by Europa Editions later this year.

Praise for WINTER:

'A wonderful novel, moving, gripping and illuminating. Keeping closely to the known facts about the triangular relationship between the elderly Thomas Hardy, his second wife Florence, and the beautiful young butcher's wife and amateur actress, Gertrude, Nicholson has used the resources of fiction to represent their emotional lives with intensity and depth.' - David Lodge 

‘A superb novel... Beautifully written, very moving.’ – John Boyne, author of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS