Press Release
Embargoed for publication until 17 FEBRUARY 2015
Meet the Author: Read Regional is back and it needs you to get involved
Book groups have never been more popular, with an estimated 50,000 regularly
meeting across the UK. But there is a special addition to a Read Regional session:
there, the author joins in with the discussion.
From March to June 2015, the annual Read Regional campaign will be celebrating
ten exciting new books from the North of England. At libraries and literary festivals
across the North East and Yorkshire, the authors will take part in intimate book
group-sized events where you can hear about their writing and talk to them about
their work.
Now in its seventh year, Read Regional is a unique campaign run by New Writing
North that partners with libraries and publishers to give readers unique access to
meet authors in their local libraries. As well as the author events, all of the Read
Regional titles are stocked in 19 library authorities across the region, creating a
wealth of northern literature available to borrow. Established writers are joined by
new talent in an exciting list, which ranges from YA fiction to graphic novel to
contemporary poetry.
Titles on the 2015 campaign include The Quick, the must-read supernatural Gothic
thriller by Lauren Owen; Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by award-winning graphic
novelists Bryan and Mary Talbot; and Herring Girl, the critically-acclaimed new novel
from Debbie Taylor.
This year, authors have been selected from across the whole of the north of
England, the first time this opportunity has been open to North West writers. YA
author Alan Gibbons and Carcanet-published poet Helen Tookey both live in
Liverpool, while Robert Williams lives in Manchester.
Early appearances at Durham Book Festival last autumn will be followed by more
festival dates for the authors, including Hexham Book Festival, Bridlington Poetry
Festival and Crossing the Tees Festival.
The full list of authors and titles for Read Regional 2015 is as follows:
Fiction
Hate, Alan Gibbons (Liverpool)
Herring Girl, Debbie Taylor (North Tyneside)
Letters to my Husband, Stephanie Butland (Northumberland)
Into the Trees, Robert Williams (Manchester)
The Quick, Lauren Owen, (York/ Durham)
The Last King of Lydia, Tim Leach (Sheffield)
Sally Heathcote: Suffragette, Bryan and Mary Talbot (Sunderland)
Poetry
Missel-Child, Helen Tookey (Liverpool)
The Ghost Pot, John Wedgwood Clarke (Scarborough)
The Portrait of the Quince as an Older Woman, Ellen Phethean (Newcastle)
Author Alan Gibbons said:
‘Read Regional is a great idea. At a time when public service budgets are tight it is
vital that authors get out to libraries to meet readers. It is wonderful for readers
because it allows them to put a face to the books they are choosing. It is brilliant for
writers because it offers them feedback on their work. I enjoy engaging with my
readers and answering questions: the more challenging the better! I try to provide a
lively, anecdotal, sometimes funny and hopefully always thought-provoking talk. I
expect to get the audience thinking and encourage them to argue, debate . . . and
read.’
Poet John Wedgwood Clarke said:
'I've had so much fun over the years talking to library readers' groups about other
authors' books that I couldn't pass up the chance to hear what they might make of
something I'd written. Writing, like reading, is usually a solitary activity, but one that
involves profound imaginative sociability. Read Regional gives the author and reader
the opportunity to turn imaginary conversations into real ones and in so doing
reinvent, together, what a poem or book might mean. I'm looking forward to travelling
about the North, going to new places, meeting new readers and learning as much as
I can from them. It's going to be great fun and no doubt full of surprises.'
Author Robert Williams said:
‘Writing a novel you spend a lot of time alone in a room and when you are a kneedeep into a draft of a book it's easy to forget that, hopefully, one day, the words you
are sweating and swearing over are going to be read. That's why it's great to be
taking part in Read Regional; it's always interesting (and sometimes terrifying), to
see what readers make of the book, to find out what they enjoyed, what exasperated
them, what convinced them and what didn't. And it's also healthy to get out of that
lonely room once in a while, see the sun or rain, stretch your legs and meet other
humans, and not just any humans at that, but readers.’
Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, said:
‘New Writing North has enjoyed working with libraries to promote books and authors
for many years. The Read Regional project grew out of our desire to offer more to
both libraries and authors and to connect communities of readers across the North in
an enjoyable way. We know that being selected for the campaign can make a real
difference to authors and to their publishers and that libraries value the introduction
to interesting authors and the support that we give them to engage readers with
poetry and new work. The project seems to me to be the perfect partnership of
readers and writers and I look forward to growing the impact of what we achieve as
our partnerships with libraries in the North grow.’
Visit www.readregional.com to find out more about the books, access full event
listings and download reading guides written by the authors. You can also join in the
conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #ReadRegional.
Ends
Photos of all the authors are available on request.
For all media enquiries and interview requests please contact Laura Fraine,
Marketing and Communications Manager at New Writing North, on 0191 204
8850 (office) or 07411 164 837 (mobile) or email
laurafraine@newwritingnorth.com
Notes to Editors:
New Writing North is the writing development agency for the North of England, and
was established in 1996. The organisation works with writers across the region to
develop career opportunities, new commissions, projects, residencies, publications
and live events.
Read Regional was launched in 2008 with the first events taking place in 2009 in
North East England. The campaign expanded into Yorkshire in 2012.
Read Regional is supported by Arts Council England and produced by New Writing
North. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation supported its development for three years from
2009 to 2011 inclusive.
Author Biographies
FICTION
Stephanie Butland Letters to my Husband (Transworld)
Stephanie Butland is a professional trainer specialising in creativity and thinking
skills. She also uses her unique skills and first-hand experience to support people
with cancer. She has written two books about her life with the illness. Letters to My
Husband is Stephanie’s first novel, about marriage, loss and learning that life moves
on whether you want it to or not. For fans of Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes.
Stephanie lives in Northumberland.
Alan Gibbons Hate (Indigo)
Alan Gibbons is a full-time writer and a visiting speaker and lecturer at schools,
colleges and literary events nationwide. Alan is well-known for his high profile
‘Campaign for the Book’ and school visits. Hate is a young adult thriller, based on
the true story of Sophie Lancaster, who was murdered in 2007 for the way she
dressed. Alan lives in Liverpool.
Tim Leach The Last King of Lydia (Atlantic Books)
What does it mean to be happy? Tim Leach’s debut novel is inspired by the writing of
Herodotus and follows the life and eventual downfall of Croesus, the king of Lydia
who believes his unimaginable wealth should make him the happiest man alive. The
Last King of Lydia is a richly imagined journey into an ancient world, where many of
the concerns remain pertinent today. Tim lives in Sheffield.
Lauren Owen The Quick (Vintage)
Lauren Owen grew up in the grounds of an old country house in Yorkshire. She is a
graduate of St Hilda's, Oxford, holds an MA in Victorian Literature, is completing a
PhD on Gothic writing and fan culture at Durham University, and is the recipient of
the Curtis Brown Prize for best writer on the UEA creative-writing programme. A
feast of supernatural, gothic horror, The Quick is her first novel. Lauren lives in
York and Durham.
Bryan and Mary Talbot Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (Jonathan Cape)
Sally Heathcote: Suffragette is the new graphic novel from the Costa Award-winning
authors of Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Bryan and Mary Talbot. Telling the inside
story of the campaign for votes for women, the book follows the fortunes of a maidof-all-work swept up in the feminist militancy of Edwardian Britain. Bryan Talbot is a
well-known graphic novelist and author of the Grandville series. Mary Talbot is an
internationally acclaimed scholar of language, gender and power. The Talbots live
in Sunderland.
Debbie Taylor Herring Girl (OneWorld Publications)
Debbie Taylor is the founder and editorial director of Mslexia. Her previous novels,
including The Fourth Queen and Hungry Ghosts, have been critically acclaimed. Her
evocative new novel, Herring Girl, moves back and forth between the 19th century
and the present, where an unsolved murder from the past is troubling a young boy.
Debbie lives in North Tyneside.
Robert Williams Into the Trees (Faber and Faber)
Robert Williams grew up in Clitheroe, Lancashire. His first novel, Luke and Jon, won
a Betty Trask Award, was translated into six languages. His second novel, How the
Trouble Started, was shortlisted for the Portico Prize for Fiction. He has worked in a
secondary school library, as a bookseller, and has written and released music under
the name The Library Trust. Into the Trees is a haunting, lyrical novel set in the
Bleasdale forest, to which its characters are unexpectedly drawn. Robert lives in
Manchester.
POETRY
Ellen Phethean A Portrait of the Quince as an Older Woman (Red Squirrel
Press)
Ellen Phethean is a sound artist, poet, playwright and editor and, with Julia Darling,
the founder of Diamond Twig Press. She spent 20004 as Writer in Residence at
Seven Stories where she wrote Wall, a teen novel in poems. Her poetry has been
widely broadcast and anthologised and her first full poetry collection, Breath, was
shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award in 2010. A Portrait of the Quince as an
Older Woman is her latest collection. Ellen lives in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Helen Tookey Missel-Child (Carcanet)
Helen Tookey has worked in academic publishing, as a university teacher in Creative
Writing at Edge Hill University and as a freelance editor. Helen also worked for The
Reader literature outreach organisation (2004-2007), where she ran a poetry reading
group in a hospital and other community reading groups. Her short collection Telling
the Fractures, a collaboration with photographer Alan Ward, was published by Axis
Projects in 2008. Her verse was anthologised in New Poetries V (Carcanet, 2011).
Missel-Child is her first full poetry collection. Helen lives in Liverpool.
John Wedgwood Clarke Ghost Pot (Valley Press)
John Wedgwood Clarke has worked as an actor, a landscape painter and university
lecturer. After studying literature, he set up and directed the Beverley Literature and
Bridlington Poetry Festivals, before leaving to become a Leverhulme Artist in
Residence at the University of Hull in 2012. He is currently UK & Ireland editor for
Arc publications, and regularly collaborates with visual artists and curators on publicart projects and exhibitions. Ghost Pot is John’s first full-length collection. John
lives in Scarborough.