Monday 14 December 2015

The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year

... is most deservedly Sarah Howe for Loop of Jade, a stunning collection of poetry that takes inspiration from the author's dual heritage as the child of a British father and a Chinese mother and her puzzling out of her cultural identity. I'm quite glad both that she won (the collection is seriously wonderful) and that poetry is getting recognition this year, since the landscape for poets so often seems quite bleak. And, as with the Guardian prize, I wish I had found a bookie ahead of time that was running odds.

No one was told ahead of time who the winner was, so I had the chance to chill with the other shortlistees in the Art Room of the London Library. While we were chatting and sipping and trying to quell our nerves before the party I had the odd realisation that it's quite likely we four will be running into each other one way or another for the rest of our professional lives, as will many of the young writers that I've met since March; it was odd but not unpleasant to wonder who of us will park our zimmer frames close together in sixty-odd years so that we can grouse about young upstarts and publishing trends. The party afterwards was very good, though I wound up chatting to too many people to get much to either drink or eat, and was star-struck by Sarah Waters to an embarrassing degree. 

And now that the prize has run its course there is nothing between me and the mound of critical work that came down to Reading to be done during break. 

But then, the laundry does appear to be piling up... 

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Literary Friction

In the midst of the skittering around of a few weeks ago I paused to drop in on the agency of Conville and Walsh and have a conversation with two brilliant people on revenge, generational issues, and the books we've enjoyed reading recently. Said brilliant people are Carrie Plitt and Octavia Bright, the minds behind Literary Friction, the radio show/podcast about books and ideas (which has an awesome name). The session I took part in went out on NTS  last week and I, of course, missed it (because I'm amazingly good at missing everything), but now it is available as a podcast for anyone who would like to have a listen (hi, Mom!) and possibly crib book recommendations. 

I have a lot more to say, but today is the day that I haul myself and my work back to Reading for the month and I haven't really slept in the past week or so, so more words will have to come when I have more brain.

Tuesday 1 December 2015

Wall

I'm sitting at my desk for the ninth semi-consecutive hour of the day looking at the two undergraduate dissertations that I need to ink up in time to talk to their authors tomorrow about all the comments made on the earlier drafts that they somehow neglected to incorporate.



Earlier today I was the only person in a professional developments session on networking that wasn't a first year or running the thing. They were all so hopeful. And neatly dressed. And they all knew what their thesises (thesii?) were on. And they wanted to talk about how intimidating it was composing emails to their supervisors. And afterwards I saw them all eating pretty lunches in the postgrad space while socialising.

And I hadn't brushed my hair because I couldn't find my hairbrush and I was wearing the same clothes I wore down on the train yesterday and I hadn't packed a lunch because there was no food in the house to pack and I'd had anti-inflammatories for breakfast because spending that long on the train always makes my back cranky and I avoided them all because I had to mark up those dissertations before I ran out of steam for the day. Which, as is probably obvious, doesn't seem to have happened.

I might be inordinately proud of the fact that I didn't strangle any of them. Heck, I didn't even snap at them.

And now I'm alternating between looking at the dissertations but not marking them up and looking at the draft I owe Henry but not revising it, and taking occasional breaks to think about the work I was supposed to have done for Rachel by now and wondering if she's noticed either the draft I sent her at the beginning of November or that there hasn't been anything from me since.


I may have also paused to arrange my coterie of sock owls into comforting configurations.

The little one in the middle is squeaking 'you can do it!' Or possibly,  'if you don't do it I will invade your dreams with a machete and make you wish you had!' 
There's obviously only one thing to do in this situation...


And that is to leaf through my downloads folder


and find something relevant. Because my downloads folder always has something relevant.



And then probably wander into the kitchen,


find something vaguely good-tasting,



make a drink,



And then see how long these dissertations take me.