Currently Reading

Wounding by Heidi James.

Forthcoming on Bluemoose Books.

(Pictured with Travis Jeppesen c/o 3:AM Magazine)

Dark Corners Of The Land is out in hardback

Dark Corners Of The Land by Adelle Stripe is out now on very limited edition and very beautiful hardback via Blackheath Books.

From their website:

The edition has been produced in a limited edition of 50 copies, each with a signed Brooke Bond Tea card (Freshwater Fish edition by E. V. Petts).

The hardback edition was created to celebrate Dark Corners of the Land being awarded ‘Poetry Book of the Year’ at the 3:AM Magazine Awards and being named a Scotsman Book of the Year in 2012.



Buy a copy here.

Currently Reading

Currently Reading

'Alan The Postman'

Alan The Postman lives in the trees.

Alan The Postman tries to capture the rhythms of jazz in oil and acrylics.

Alan The Postman cycles around Scandinavia with a bag of olives and a bottle of whisky.

Alan The Postman has no time for television or the internet. Or rock music.

Alan The Postman is a PHD Doctor of Horror.

Alan The Postman reads my books then returns them, shaking his head.

Alan The Postman knows more about Karl Marx than you or I ever will.

Alan The Postman gave me this oil painting that he did of Aspinall Street in Mytholmroyd, just across the valley from our house. It is the street where Ted Hughes grew up.

It now hangs on our living room wall.

Journalism Activity Incoming

I recently had a chat with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth and reported my findings back for a Metal Hammer cover feature. Strange fellow....

In the same issue I also interviewed my favourite new noisy UK band Baby Godzilla and wrote words about Dillinger Escape Plan.

It's on sale now...

I've also recently been on tour with Biffy Clyro, one of very few bands that I've met through journalism who I would genuinely call friends. I think I first wrote about them 12 years ago, and many times since. You can read the feature in the new issue of Mojo. Out now. Black Sabbath are on the cover.

In the same issue I've also written about Frank Tuner, Noah And The Whale, Ian Svenonius' new book and the rather marvellous new album by Wolf People.



 

Currently Reading

'The First Swim of Spring'

Three weeks ago it was snow. Great drifts of it, blowing across the moors and banking up against the dry-stone walls until they disappeared.

This stretch of the Pennines was buried and even now, with the sun shining and the overdue daffodils fighting for their section of sky, my road is still closed due to subsidence caused by the weight of the snow and the shifting of rock and mud up top cracking stone work that is decades – maybe centuries – old.

Today the moorlands wear a different mask though. The sun is out and a warm westerly whistles through the burgeoning grasses. The snow has found a new purpose....

I wrote a piece for Caught By The River about my first swim of spring.
You can read it here.

(Photos by Adelle Stripe)

Currently Reading

Currently Reading

Currently Reading

A Fiction Habit interview

"I was born in 1976. I grew up on a nice sedate, lower middle class estate in the north-east of England. I remember neat lawns, the miner’s strike, summer holidays, spirited people. A sense of safety in the world...."

I have been interviewed by literary blog A Fiction Habit about influences, life and past and future writing projects.

Within it are some details about a novella I am publishing this summer via Galley Beggar Press.

Read the full piece here.

Thank you.

Granta Best of Young British Novelists

Every ten years Granta publish their list of '20 Best Novelists Under 40'. It's an Industry Thing and even though the list is generally a bit of a snoozefest, the occasional writer that I enjoy - David Peace, Dan Rhodes, Hanif Kureishi, Alan Warner - sneaks in there.

Anyway. My publisher optimistically submitted me for this decade's list. It involves sending existing novels, future novels, shories, extracts tonnes of stuff. I rate my chances as 0% and have vowed to eat my hat - and film myself doing so - were I to be included.

It's not happening basically, possibly because I don't show enough promise / don't attend literary festivals / am not signed to a large publisher / don't have friends in high places / am a misanthropic Northern hermit who spends half his week chopping wood / am simply not ambitious in that way. And also because I just may not be good enough.

I only like the writing part of being a writer. And I'll keep doing it. Keep trying to get better.

In advance of Monday's list here's some names of those UK novelists under 40 who I think should make the cut. In no particular order...

Jenn Ashworth

Tony O'Neill

Chris Killen

Lee Rourke

Jenni Fagan

Richard Milward

Adam Biles

Melissa Harrison

Ross Raisin

Stuart Evers

Heidi James-Dunbar

Michael Smith

Socrates Adams

Christiana Spens

Gavin James-Bower

Evie Wyld

Joe Stretch

Joeseph Ridgwell

Sarah Hall

Russ Litten

Jacob Polley

Ben Brooks

Lars Iyer

Steven Hall

Nikesh Shukla

Lander Hawes