Dundee Literary Festival

I'll be at Dundee Literary Festival on Saturday 25th October at 5 pm with fellow Scott Prize winner Kirsty Logan. We'll be talking about short stories and first novels. 

Kirsty's novel The Gracekeepers will be published in 2015 and it sounds fabulous.

"The Gracekeepers is about a circus boat in a flooded world. North and her bear live on the Circus Excalibur, floating between the scattered archipelagos that are all that remains of the land. To survive, the circus must perform for the few fortunate islanders in return for food and supplies. Meanwhile, in the middle of the ocean, Callanish tends the watery graves along the equator, as penance for a long-ago mistake."

Mitochondrial Donation

You may have heard the discussion about mitochondrial diseases and mitochondrial donation on BBC Radio Five this afternoon (you can listen again here, for the moment).

Mitochondrial donation (aka mitochondrial replacement therapy) is a technique that involves replacing the unhealthy mitochondria in a woman who carries the disease, with the healthy mitochondria from a donor woman, during the process of IVF.

Here's a link to information about the Commons Select Committee Evidence Hearing on mitochondrial donation which will take place on 22nd October.

My second child spent her life in a neonatal intensive care unit because she was born with a mitochondrial disease. As a carrier, and a mother, I support mitochondrial donation. 

Here's a short video about mitochondrial disease, narrated by Bill Nighy.

Cheltenham and Wells Festivals

Here I am, getting ready to do the A Song for Issy Bradley Book Group event at Cheltenham with Cathy Rentzenbrink. I took my phone into the event so I could take a picture of the audience, but I forgot (and the lights were blinding, anyway).

Book group events are interesting. As usual, some members of the audience were furious with Ian Bradley while others empathised with him - it's always funny to watch people argue (albeit nicely) about someone I made up!

By the end of book group events people are relaxed and tend to ask quite personal questions. I don't mind answering, but the questions still surprise me - people expect you to talk about your own life as well as the book, something I didn't realise when I was writing A Song for Issy Bradley.

Cathy was a great chair/host and we even happened to come down for breakfast at exactly the same moment this morning (Cathy had been working on the final edits of her memoir for a couple of hours whereas I'd just got out of bed) which meant that we could carry on chatting. 

I love pretty much everything about being a writer (apart from the actual writing of novel 2, which is not proving to be much fun at the moment). One of the very best bits is being allowed to go into places like the Writers' Room and have something to eat while surreptitiously glancing at people whose books I've read and/or seen on the television.

Because I'm going to Wells Literature Festival tomorrow, I stayed in Cheltenham today and went to some really interesting presentations, including Marina Warner's Once Upon a Time, A Short History of the Fairy Tale (above) and Blood, Sex and Death - Ancient Greek Drama (below).

Deirde Le Faye's Jane Austen's Country Life took place in the gorgeous Spiegeltent, and there was afternoon tea. Lovely.









Tomorrow morning I'll be at Wells Literature Festival with Gabriel Gbadamosi, Fay Weldon and Emma Craigie. Can't wait.

** Edited to add...

I had a fabulous time at Wells Literature Festival. It was lovely to meet Gabriel Gbadamosi and Emma Craigie whose novels Vauxhall and Chocolate Cake with Hitler I really enjoyed. It was also fantastic to meet Fay Weldon who is not only extremely accomplished, but is absolutely charming and very kind.

The Bookshop Book

Today Jen Campbell is visiting the blog and answering some questions about her writing, her work in a bookshop and her new book, The Bookshop Book, published by Constable (Little, Brown). Jen grew up in the north-east of England and went to Edinburgh University. She now lives in London where she works at an antiquarian bookshop. Her first book, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops was a Sunday Times Bestseller, and she’s also an award-winning poet and short story writer.

How long have you worked in a bookshop?
Seven years now... I think! I started at a new independent bookshop in Edinburgh (The Edinburgh Bookshop), working part-time when I was a student, and now I work at Ripping Yarns, an antiquarian bookshop in north London.

Is it something you always wanted to do or is it something that happened by chance or serendipity? 
I’ve always loved books and writing. To me, bookshops are magical places full of infinite possibilities. The emotional ties we have to stories fascinate me, and as a bookseller working to match people up with books and worlds that they might fall in love with... well, that sounds like a pretty damn good job to me. Mix it together with being a writer, too, and I’m a happy lady.


You write poetry and prose. Which came first and which do you enjoy the most? 
Poetry came first, though I love them both. (Please don’t make me choose!)

How did you get the idea for The Bookshop Book?
I think it was born out of my ‘Bookshop Spotlights’ blog posts that I started in 2012, featuring bookshops I really liked. But the idea really took hold after my first book was published. It was called ‘Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops’ and was a collection of all the bizarre things that get said to booksellers: misheard book titles and children asking if they could get to Narnia through our bookcases (when I said no, they nodded wisely and said that their furniture didn’t work for getting to Narnia either, and that their dad said it was because their mum had bought it at IKEA.) Bookselling is a bit of a mad world. I love it.

I spent a lot of time doing events for ‘Weird Things...’ in wonderful bookshops, talking to inspiring booksellers and sharing bookish tales. And while I’d written about the weird things that happen to booksellers, I hadn’t written about the magical feeling of bookshops and how books affect people. I hadn’t spoken about the history and wonder of ‘houses for stories’ (which is what one of my youngest customers calls bookshops, and I adore it.) My editor said: ‘Think about how you would write about that. How you’d capture it. Then send me something.’ So I did. I wrote a proposal about a book that explored all the fantastic bookshops around the world: bookshops on trains and on boats, and even bookshops in the middle of a jungle. A book that had interviews with authors about their favourite places, and facts about the history of the written word. And my editor liked it, so The Bookshop Book was born.

What was the hardest thing about compiling The Bookshop Book?
The deadline... I think (isn’t it always)? And the vast amount of material I could choose to research (which is also a positive). And the fear that I’ve missed out something very important. (I don’t think I have... I hope!)

What are you working on now/next?
I’m writing a novel. It’s eating away at me (which I think is a good thing.) I’m hoping to finish it by next summer. It’s not about bookshops, but it is about the power of stories and the frightening things they can make us believe. I’m excited about it.

Jen’s website

The Bookshop Book

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