Our literary journal, exclusive to members of Suffolk Book League |
|
|
LETTER FROM THE CHAIR Reading a book is one of our most private and individual pleasures, and a way of engaging with a host of similarly minded people. In the Suffolk Book League we like to do justice in both directions. What choice is more individual and idiosyncratic than deciding what to read next? I hope in your indecision you will resort to BookTalk for a friendly and unforced nudge, as you indulge such an agreeable act of freedom. But, by joining with us to meet writers themselves in the relaxed atmosphere of the Ipswich Institute and, by sharing what you found in a recently read book, new connections are made, new interpretations are received and you are in the company of other minds across the whole world. This edition of BookTalk comes to you as we are completing a most promising schedule of speakers for 2024. We shall let you know more of that as the year closes, but for now we remember the happy evenings we have had this year. This BookTalk unashamedly looks to our past, as Peter Labdon and Anne Parry recall the foundation of the Book League, and we revisit some of the distinguished contributions to our journal over the years. Our thanks to Janet for her curation of our archive and to Jeff Taylor for his quarrying of the material for this edition. Our friendly link with Dial Lane Books is celebrated by Andrew Marsh's report on his more recent retail activities, in Manningtree as well as Ipswich. And we take note of some of the book festivals in and near Suffolk, which we regard as allies in encouraging people to read and discuss. We would like to include more of our members’ contributions in the ‘What We Are Reading' section of BookTalk. Please send responses to the books you have liked to: enquiries@suffolk bookleague.org Our joint patronage of the New Angle Prize will reach its fulfilment as this BookTalk is published. Judging books which are so varied in character is (I speak from experience) a testing job. Perhaps by the time you read this you will have heard of the winner, maybe even have been present at the award dinner on September 21st, and so will judge for yourselves. In any case, the Prize makes us glad to live in a region so well endowed with literary talent. Enjoy the books you will be reading this autumn and share your experiences at our meetings and in the next edition. Keith Jones Chair of Suffolk Book League enquiries@suffolkbookleague.org |
|
|
N.B. BookTalk online is packed with links to 29 articles and will probably be shortened by your email provider. To ensure you can get the most from BookTalk, please use: View in a browser - at the very top of this email. |
|
|
Recent Author Events and Authors' Book Recommendations |
|
|
Blake Morrison Our May event was another embarkation of exploration and discovery. We had the privilege of Blake Morrison stepping into the limelight to discuss his most recent, and perhaps, his most profound work to date, Two Sisters. Gill Lowe interviewed him, with targeted but gentle questions, probing into the harsh yet delicate nature of the memoir... | | |
|
|
Matt Howard Our last evening of the year was graced with the extremely talented poet and conservationist Matt Howard. Reading and explaining a selection of poems from his debut anthology Gall, its luminosity and mesmeric imagery swept through the room like waves, the audience enraptured by Howard’s soothing voice which enriched and instilled his language with depth and sonorous meaning. Delving into the backstory behind each poem, animated them in an entirely new light... | | |
|
|
Sophie Haydock This conversation between Sophie Haydock and Keith Jones was wide-ranging and full of fascinating details. Keith introduced Sophie as a woman of letters, short story champion, and winner of the Impress Prize for debut novelists. Asked how her novel The Flames began, Sophie told us about her visit to an exhibition of Egon Schiele’s work in 2015. She described how the four muses had ‘challenge in their eyes’... | | |
|
|
Upcoming Events Tickets to all our 2023 events are now on sale. You can book your tickets on our website via the following links: |
|
|
| | Diana Souhami Ipswich Institute 7.30 pm Thursday 5th October | | |
|
| | Simon Loxley Ipswich Institute 7.30 pm Wednesday 1st Nov | | |
|
| | Jessie Greengrass Ipswich Institute
7.30 pm Wednesday 6th December | | |
|
|
| | No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami Read by Gill Lowe | | |
|
| | Two Sisters by Blake Morrison Read by Dee Crowe | | |
|
| | Foxash by Kate Worsley
Read by Jonesy
| | |
|
| | The High House by Jessie Greengrass Read by Andrew Burton | | |
|
|
What We We've Been Reading...A book from each decade of the Suffolk Book League |
|
|
A tiny snapshot of the books we've enjoyed from the last four decades...do tell us yours! Maybe you could write us a review for a future BookTalk? |
|
|
| | 1980s The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood Read by Janet Bayliss | | |
|
| | 1990s Possession by A.S Byatt Read by Dee Crowe | | |
|
| | 2000s Dirt Music by Tim Winton Read by Tricia Gilbey | | |
|
| | 2010s The Binding by Bridget Collins Read by James Phillips | | |
|
|
Celebrating 40 Years of the Suffolk Book League |
|
|
Following our 40th anniversary last year, Jeff Taylor has been digging into our archive and asking our long-time members to help Suffolk Book League celebrate an amazing forty years of connecting readers and authors. |
|
|
Suffolk Book League 1982-2022 Last year the Suffolk Book League celebrated 40 years of promoting reading in the county. The origins of the League are not widely known so I begin this brief celebratory article with an account written by Peter Labdon and Anne Parry which was most recently published in June 2012 in issue #148 of our literary journal BookTalk. Following on from this, I have provided a short overview of BookTalk, which, in its 183 issues, provides an essential resource for appreciating the activities of the Suffolk Book League over the last four decades and hopefully will continue to do so for many years to come. Another such resource are the memories of some of those members of the league who have served on the committee over the years. I thank them for their contributions and apologise that their offerings have not appeared in the format which was originally suggested. Jeff Taylor | | |
|
|
A Fascinating Forty Years of Events: Your Memories We have welcomed over 400 authors in the last 40 0r so years including such well known writers as Ronald Blythe, Angela Carter, Colin Dexter, Margaret Drabble, Jenny Diski, Tessa Hadley, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Doris Lessing, Hilary Mantel and Marina Warner to name just a few. The 183 issues of BookTalk published so far describe many of these events in detail and in recent issues Janet Bayliss has started digging out some of these articles for the From The Archive section in BookTalk online. To celebrate our 40th anniversary various committee members, past and present, have been kind enough to provide some of their memories of being involved. |
|
|
On the 18th June 1982, a few days after the launch of the Ipswich and Suffolk Book League, a newsletter, two pages of typed A4, was posted out to members. The first paragraph of what was headed ISBL NEWS, read: ‘FIRST, welcome to membership of Ipswich and Suffolk Book League. Thank you for joining. Immediately after the public launch on 7th June we had sixty members. Recruitment goes forward steadily and it is important that it should do so, because we must have sound membership and financial bases to be able to support a varied programme throughout Suffolk, and a ‘newspaper’ by means of which we can all keep in touch...’
|
|
|
Afterword The Suffolk Book League is a charitable organisation which has survived successfully over 40 years due to the hard work of volunteers, particularly those who have been active on its various committees. The archives do not allow for the compiling of a comprehensive list of these people but those who have kindly provided their memories give an indication of the work involved. The archives do however allow for the compilation of those chairs of the Suffolk Book League who have overseen the various committees in their work and as you can see from the following list there haven’t been that many. This list does not include the occasional deputy chair or acting chair. |
|
|
And that's not all. In the next issue of BookTalk look out for a list of previous events. Will your favourite author have spoken at SBL in the past, perhaps before they became well-known? We hope to help you find out. |
|
|
Recommended Graphic Novels |
|
|
Some stories are best told as novels or short fiction, others as songs or films or epic poems and some come into their own as graphic novels. Graphic novels give readers an immersive reading experience in a format that is rich and exciting, where words and pictures interplay, often for tragic or comic effect. It’s akin to watching a film with subtitles – except that each picture can only be one of a very few stills in a series of sequential frames. As a result, the storytelling is lean and powerful and makes use of universal visual codes, of position, expression and movement, to get ideas across in a very neat way...
|
|
|
Rose Gant’s PhD Diaries No. 1 |
|
|
My name is Rose Gant and I have been a member of SBL since 2021 and a committee member since earlier this year. Outside of the Book League I work part-time at Christchurch Mansion (and Ipswich Museum prior to it closing for redevelopment) where I get to share my love of history with visitors as well as help look after our extensive museum collection. Mostly though, my time is occupied with reading and researching as I have recently undertaken a new adventure of doing a PhD in English Literature...
| | |
|
|
Tales from the Bookseller |
|
|
One thing I have learnt over the last three years is that my dream to run my own bookshop … is a lot of people’s dream. The amount of folk that tell me on pretty much a daily basis that I am living their dream astounds me. It seems everyone has a desire to run their own bookshop. I say if you can, then go for it. Just not here in Ipswich thank you very much! |
|
|
As you may or may not know, I opened my pop-up in The Tree in Manningtree at the start of the summer, so I thought it only right that I tell you a little about it all. On the day I moved in, I got to The Tree at 5am with the till system and the computer, as I had been advised that I could get a table set up by 9/10 o’clock, then I would very likely have some customers, due to the fact there was a an art trail in town over that particular weekend... |
|
|
A glimpse of our exciting new programme... |
|
|
STOP PRESS
Preview of the 2024 Suffolk Book League programme We are excited that we have bookings already for next year! Here are some dates for your 2024 diary: February 8th 2024 – Luke Wright March 7th 2024 - Kate Worsley June 19th 2024 - Patrick Barkham September 11th 2024 - Eva Verde October 10th 2024 - Rebecca Goss December 5th 2024 - India Knight We have invited other wonderful authors and are waiting to confirm four more events. |
|
|
The New Angle Prize is back! |
|
|
The New Angle Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature associated with or influenced by the region of East Anglia. It has been running since 2009, previous winners have included Anna Mackmin, Kate Worsley and Jim Kelly. After a pause of four years the award returned for 2023 alongside a new award, the University of Suffolk Creative Suffolk Author Award. Both awards have a main prize of £2,000. The judges have selected their shortlist of six, from which the £2,000 winner will be chosen, with £500 for a runner-up. |
|
|
Suffolk Reflections - An Anthology |
|
|
Last month we welcomed the new anthology, Suffolk Reflections, from the MA Creative and Critical Writing students at the University of Suffolk. This publication follows the much-loved Suffolk Folk, which celebrates our region's mysterious folktales and ancient legends, and Suffolk Arboretum, which focuses on remarkable trees and woodlands. This new collection is inspired by the many waterways of East Anglia. From seal-skin selkies to the silver darlings of the herring fleets, from the beam of a lighthouse to flash floods and marshland ghosts, these tales bring to the surface the mysterious and fluid connections we hold with the bodies of water that sustain our lives. |
|
|
Local Festivals and Events |
|
|
The spring/summer has seen a plethora of festivals happening in Suffolk which are either solely devoted to literature or which have literary events attached to them and the autumn is no different. Bury St. Edmunds is the location of two festivals in October. On the 7th & 8th the Foreword Festival, Writing on the Fringe https://forewordfestival.uk/ is happening at The Guildhall. Branded as the ‘first literary fringe festival in the UK’ the organisers have ‘invited authors, independent publishers and speakers from around the UK for a celebration of literature that’s outside the mainstream’ … ‘playing host to authors of graphic novels, SF and fantasy, comedy, poetry, children’s books, non-fiction and more, as well as offering workshops for writers, and help with getting your work into print’. Between the 20th & 22nd there will be Bury St. Edmunds’ Literature Festival, Celebrating books and Writing in the Heart of East Anglia https://www.burylitfest.co.uk/ is based at the Unitarian Meeting House. It ‘returns for its fifth year with a host of exciting events, talks and discussions with some of the most exciting authors in literature’. On the 4th & 5th November a new event, the Southwold Literary Festival, is being launched. Inspired by the success of ‘Slaughter in Southwold’ it is being organised by Southwold Library, Southwold Arts Centre and Southwold Books. Tickets and information can be found here https://www.southwoldartscentre.co.uk/whats-on/southwold-literary-festival-saturday-day-ticket On the 17th November, the annual festival dinner of Lavenham Literary Festival is taking place at the Swan Hotel https://www.lavenhamliteraryfestival.co.uk/ The guest speaker will be author and journalist Carla Carlisle. The biennial festival will be back in November 2024. Details of these events will be added to our Literature and Events calendar on our website https://www.suffolkbookleague.org/literature-festivals If you are organising a literary event and wish us to add it to our calendar and promote it on our social media please send details to info@suffolkbookleague.org Jeff Taylor |
|
|
The Low House Literary Festival 2023 |
|
|
Rural Suffolk village Laxfield isn’t the first place you’d think of to host a literary festival but I’m guessing once upon a time, Hay-on-Wye wasn’t the most likely candidate either. Now though, The Hay Festival attracts a hundred thousand visitors a year and Laxfield Lit. Fest is becoming a miniature, but no less powerful literary community... |
|
|
Primadonna is an inclusive, non-profit organisation which was created to support female writers. It’s a vibrant three-day festival held at the Food Museum in Stowmarket and celebrates all things to do with writing. Each year it has delivered what can only be described as written and spoken genius... | | |
|
|
Regional Schools Mastermind Final 2023 |
|
|
Suffolk Book League continued to support the Schools Mastermind by awarding book tokens to the winning schools at this year’s Regional Final. The competition took place at the Riverside Centre at Stratford St Andrew on Friday 5 May. Students taking part represented seven schools: Claydon, Debenham, Farlingaye, Ipswich School, Sir John Leman, Thomas Mills and Pakefield... | | |
|
|
|
|
