More details and bookings on Eventbrite
Open Call – Ecology of Words Workshop – Helsinki
Open call for expressions of interest from writers, artists, and others interested in participating in a workshop exploring the vocabulary of ecology, and taking place Sat 8-Sun 9 July 2017. Deadline for expressions of interest: 31 May.
The workshop will set words off on irreverent adventures and explore subversive approaches to lexicons, dictionaries, taxonomies, and glossaries. We will be developing discursive, de-definitions of terms such as nonhuman, entanglement, symbiosis, boundary, interface, mess, remote, dust, toxicity. Other terms for de-definition will emerge during the workshop.
Workshop Leader: Tracey Warr is a writer who has worked with installed text and published books and essays on contemporary art.
Workshop Contributors: Jenni Nurmenniemi, curator at HIAP – Helsinki International Artists Programme, Finland; Jussi Parikka, new media theorist; Antti Salminen, philosopher, poet, fiction writer and literary critic.
Selected texts from the workshop will be included in a book to be published in 2018.
There will be a maximum of 12 participants in the workshop. You must be able to participate fully on both days (10am-6pm). Please email your expression of interest consisting of a one paragraph biography and another paragraph on why you are interested in participating to: traceykwarr@gmail.com and jenni@hiap.fi by 31 May.
The workshop will take place at HIAP on Suomenlinna Island, 15 minutes by ferry from Helsinki. The workshop is free. Lunch on both days and dinner on the first day will be provided by HIAP. The accommodation and travel costs to/from Helsinki are at participants’ own cost. HIAP can support the travel costs of 1–2 workshop participants from outside of Helsinki (within Finland), please e-mail jenni@hiap.fi for more information.
The workshop is part of the Frontiers in Retreat project.
Writers interviewed
My interview with Carol Drinkwater just published. Her new novel, The Lost Girl, is set in Paris and published next month.
Stepping into medieval London
‘The only plagues of London are the immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires’ wrote William Fitz Stephen in his account of the city in the 12th century.
On a recent trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts I came across a little book called Norman London in a second-hand bookshop. The book contained Fitz Stephen’s account of London written sometime before 1183, together with an essay by Frank Stenton and map research on 12th century London by Marjorie B. Honeybourne. The book was a silvermine for my research as a historical novelist and it is ironic that I travelled to a second-hand bookshop in Massachusetts (the wonderful Raven Books) to find it.
Last year my novel, Conquest: Daughter of the Last King, was published by Impress Books. It is the first in the trilogy charting the life of Nest ferch Rhys who was a potent symbol in the struggles between the Normans and the Welsh. The second book in the trilogy, Conquest: The Drowned Court, will be published this autumn. Nest was one of the many mistresses of the Norman king Henry I and parts of the novels are set in London.
The complicated business of the great 12th century city was conducted by the aldermen of London in the Husting which met in the Guildhall every Monday. Husting is a Scandinavian word and it is likely that this city institution had its origin during the Scandinavian occupation of London in the time of King Alfred. The Husting was the court of civil business hearing pleas on debts, land disputes, land gifts, regulating foreign merchants, controlling weights and measures.
Stepping into Medieval Worlds is an illustrated talk on Norman London that I will be presenting at The Guildhall Library on 8 June. It will address the literary sources for my fiction, including Fitz Stephen’s account. It is exciting to be speaking on this topic at the site of the 12th century Husting in the Guildhall which is on a street, Aldermanbury, named after those aldermen in Norman London. I will talk about the range of medieval literary sources I employ to construct the fictional worlds of my novels including Orderic Vitalis’ chronicle of the ‘extremely unrestrained’ Normans, viking poems, recipe books, maps, and medical manuals from the Middle Ages, the songs of the female troubadours, and the lascivious writings of medieval archbishops and dukes.
Stepping into Medieval Worlds
Thursday 8 June 2017, 6-8pm
Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London EC2V 7HH
Tickets: £5.90 includes wine reception. Book at:
https://steppingintomedivalworlds.eventbrite.co.uk
I have more author talks coming up soon in Wales:
Fri 28 July 11am Victoria Books, Haverfordwest
Sun 30 July 1pm Carew Castle
Sat 23 September 10am-4pm Narberth Book Fair
Sat 30 September 11am Tenby Library in Tenby Arts Festival
Sat 14 Sept 10.30am Pembroke Dock Library for National Book Month.
Image credits:
The Dunstable Swan Jewel in the British Museum (Wikimedia photo by Ealdgyth)
The Guildhall, engraved by E.Shirt after a drawing by Prattent, c.1805 (Wikimedia)
Carew Castle, Wales (Wikimedia photo by Nilfanion).
A writing life in France
17 Boulevard Haute Guyenne
Villefranche-de-Rouergue, 12200
France
organised by The English Library
Many writers, from Joyce to Hemingway, have seen and used the value of the estranged position. Not entirely fitting in, being a bit of a voyeur is the ideal position for a writer. Not belonging can allow a writer to see afresh. I’m looking forward to talking in Villefranche-de-Rouergue on Friday this week, about the impacts and inspirations that living in France have had on my writing.
‘Southern France is graced by spectacular hilltop castles, medieval towns and a rash of English historical novelists,’ I wrote in my article ‘The Lure of Another Time, Another Place’, published in Historical Novels Review magazine (Feb 2016). I interviewed a number of other English writers about living and writing in France. ‘Writing starts with landscape,’ declared Kate Mosse. ‘The landscape itself often suggests the stories that might be possible within it,’ said Deborah Lawrenson. And in the same vein, Jacqueline Yallop found that, ‘It’s actually treading the ground which makes a difference, which allows…you to inhabit other lives’. Amanda Hodgkinson pointed out the supportive attitude in France towards the notion of an artist’s life. And, of course, there is an avid English-reading readership living here in France.
I will be talking alongside another locally based writer Stephen Goldenberg whose latest thriller is set in Villefranche.
The event will take place in the Salle de Travail, across from the terrace of Hotel Les Fleurines. Entry is free.
Tapas available afterwards at 10 euros per plate and must be pre-ordered by email to jackienaismith@hotmail.com.
Final rewrite
At that satisfying stage again – ready for the final rewrite of my next novel, before sending it off to the editors at Impress Books. It is the second in a trilogy of novels on Nest ferch Rhys and the struggle between the Normans and the Welsh in the 12th century.
This new book, Conquest: The Drowned Court, concentrates on the action-packed events of Nest’s life and King Henry I’s reign between 1107 and 1121. The Flemish nun, Benedicta, took me by surprise in the writing and also plays a substantial role in this book.
The first book in the trilogy, Conquest: Daughter of the Last King is out now. This sequel will be published in the autumn. I am talking about researching and writing the Conquest series at a number of book events in Wales, London and France over the coming months. Next events:
21 April – The English Library, Villefranche-de-Rouergue
8 June – The Guildhall Library, London.
Writing Worlds in France
