Category Archives: Storytelling

Shonaleigh Cumbers: Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go; and One Green Thing: clean aviation fuel

Shonaleigh Cumbers is a Drut’syla. To quote from here: She’s a living tradition holder. It’s a tradition you probably won’t have heard of. It’s a tradition that flourished in Jewish families, but that was wiped out during the holocaust. Almost wiped … Continue reading

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Can we ever know our parents as individuals? And One Green Thing: cling film storage alternatives

This year my sisters and I had the family ciné films transferred to DVD and I’ve just watched them all. And as I watched the parts where we children didn’t feature, I wondered if it’s ever possible for children to … Continue reading

Posted in Drink, Food, One Green Thing, Parents, Plastic, Storage, Storytelling, Writing | 2 Comments

City Tales, and Hive

Since 2004, Oxford University Press has been publishing volumes of City Tales, collections of short stories set in European cities translated into English. The guiding idea is to give the English-speaking reading traveller (I paraphrase): Stories expertly translated by writers with an … Continue reading

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Jericho Writers’ Self-Editing Your Novel Course, and the wonders of Atlas Obscura: destinations, food and drink

I’m in the final week of Jericho Writers’ Self-Editing your novel course run by Debi Alper and Emma Darwin and all I can say is if you’ve written a first (or even a twenty-first) draft of a novel and you know something’s … Continue reading

Posted in Drink, Fiction, Food, Places, Rewriting, Storytelling, Third Novel, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Courses | Leave a comment

Atul Gawande and Being Mortal; and a Remembrance Poppy Badge

Atul Gawande‘s Being Mortal – which I wrote about here in the context of his 2014 Reith Lectures – is extraordinary for its courageous and honest confrontation of our failure to confront how we want to die. Or, as Atul Gawande … Continue reading

Posted in Death and Dying, Psychology, Storytelling, Things I'd Love to Have Made | Leave a comment

The UK Referendum, Brexit, and Meike Ziervogel on the importance of listening to other people’s stories

On 1 July Meike Ziervogel, founder and publisher at Peirene Press, published this: Translation is Europe’s only common language. Umberto Eco It’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece about the UK referendum, Brexit, and the importance of listening to other people’s … Continue reading

Posted in Artists, Creativity, Equality, Love, Psychology, Storytelling, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writing | Leave a comment

Why Readers Stop Reading; Lisa McInerney’s 2016 Bailey’s win, and Penicillin

An interesting survey on why readers stop reading: There’s more here. It’s published by Lit World Interviews (I found it on a TLC facebook post.) The conclusions are mostly what you’d expect to put readers off (although I particularly loved Unexpected Sex as a deterrent to reading on). But … Continue reading

Posted in Artists, Creativity, Literary Prizes, Storytelling, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Writers, Writing | 2 Comments

What it’s like to write and what it’s like to imagine you might write; and Suffragette

In Edith Wharton‘s 1925 The Writing of Fiction  in the section called ‘Constructing a Navel’ – obviously a typographical mistake but one I like for its overtones of contemplation – Wharton writes about the creation of character in a novel: The creatures … Continue reading

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How incomprehensible unworkable things inspire

Joanna Briscoe and Grace Paley caught my attention this month. They’re very different writers but I’ve just read articles about writing by both. Grace Paley died in 2007 but a friend sent me her thoughts on writing recently. Here’s an extract … Continue reading

Posted in Storytelling, Things I'd Love to Have Made, Women, Writers, Writing | 5 Comments

Scared to Say I Love You this Valentine’s Day? Fabularium and Random Acts of Kindness Week

If the very idea of saying I love you this Valentine’s Day scares you to death, may I suggest a remedy: ask yourself why you’re with (or want to be with) the one you love and then make a list … Continue reading

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Beyond the Border …

… is the name of a magical storytelling festival held at St Donat’s Castle in south Wales every other year. It takes its name from Dylan Thomas’s Poem in October. Here are the second, fourth, fifth and seventh verses: My … Continue reading

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