Congratulations to Florian Grosset for winning the 2022 Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing. The Chagos Betrayal is a shocking graphic novel account of poverty and discrimination suffered by the Chagos Islanders when their eviction by the British enforced US military control of their Indian Ocean home. This is the first time a work of graphic art has won the Bread & Roses Award and we could not be happier for Florian.
A huge congratulations to Sabba Khan and Veronika Muchitsch who have both been shortlisted in this year’s British Book Design & Production Awards (Graphic Novel category) for their works THE ROLES WE PLAY and CYBERMAN.
The BBDPA is a wonderful award and this year’s shortlist is incredibly strong so congratulations to all the shortlisted authors.
Summer is not over yet. With plenty of hot sunny days ahead to fill with reading at the beach, in the garden, or hiding in the shade, we have put together a Myriad Summer Fiction Reading List. These ten titles offer something for everyone, from short stories to generational epics, and Ethical Shop are offering 50% off for a limited time. Check out the titles below and head over to Ethical Shop to grab a great deal.
This week our Book Sales and Promotions Co-ordinator Alex Thornber caught up with Charlotte Amelia Poe to discuss their award winning memoir How To be Autistic.
AT: Good Morning, and Happy Pride! How are you?
Charlotte Amelia Poe: Hi! I’m good, thank you. Currently listening to My Chemical Romance and blasting it loud.
AT: I thought it would be fun to revisit How to be Autistic and was wondering where the first seeds of that project came from?
CAP: Pretty much as soon as I got home from winning the Spectrum Art Prize, I started writing How To Be Autistic. I really wanted to expand on the ideas the video had, and I felt like I finally had an opportunity to speak about my experiences and share a perspective I hadn’t found before. It was a kind of manic, mad dash to the finish line, and I never expected anything to come of it.
AT: Your voice in the book is so clear and so open, it reads like having a conversation, was that a conscious choice for this project?
CAP: I think part of writing it quickly, and with only a sentence as a plan for each chapter, I think it just made it really honest and a little rough around the edges. I’ve spent my entire online life writing about what I’ve been going through in blogs, talking in vlogs, making graphics – generally just having a conversation with anyone who was willing to listen, and How To Be Autistic was a genuine extension of that. So I don’t know how much of it was a conscious choice, as opposed to what I was used to doing.
AT: Putting yourself, and your inner life, out into the world like your book does must be a daunting experience. How has the books reception been for you?
CAP: Honestly it’s a little bit terrifying. I haven’t read it since I finished it, and it’s sort of this sort of secret locked away thing that I have to accept is out in the world, but I have to separate myself from or I think I’d go mad. I’ve basically given the world all the weapons they need to hurt me. Thankfully, people have been kind, and very understanding, and instead of using it to harm, people have used empathy and reached out to say “hey, I relate to this”, which is hard to read sometimes, because when I wrote it I was half hoping nobody would relate to it, that things would have changed enough that it was irrelevant, but at least it has helped people feel less alone in some way. Which is neat.
AT: What has been the most rewarding part of the process for you?
CAP: Definitely the messages and emails I get from people who have read it. I’m terrible at replying, I never know what to say – I immediately forget how to hold a human conversation, but I read every single one even if I don’t reply and it means so, so much to me. That there are dozens (literally!) of people who have been diagnosed as a result of something I’ve done, that’s amazing. That there are people who understand themselves or a loved one better as a result – that’s just so cool. I think we reach for books to try to understand ourselves, I know I do, and the fact that people found that understanding, I don’t even know what to do with that, except to say thank you for taking a chance on a very strange book.
AT: Are you working on anything at the moment?
CAP: My second book, The Language Of Dead Flowers, my first novel, is coming out at the end of September, preorders open really soon (beginning of July!) and I’ll get to share the absolutely beautiful cover I was lucky enough to have my friend, Tylar, work on, soon. It’s about a nonbinary tattoo artist who just happens to be a necromancer in a world where necromancy is forbidden. I’m absolutely in love with all the characters and I’ve fought really hard for this book to exist, and I’m really excited for other people to read about Tao and Adam and their lives.
AT: If you could recommend one book for people to read this pride month, what would it be?
CAP: That’s so hard! I think, just because it’s one of my all time favourite books and I absolutely devoured it when I read it, it has to be Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. It uses multimedia elements to tell more than one story at once, which I always love to read, and Aled and Frances are both absolutely amazing characters, and honestly having Aled as ace representation (and I headcanon him as nonbinary, to be honest, though I don’t know if he was written to be or not) and Frances as bi representation is really awesome. It’s just a great story and I return to it over and over again.
How To Be Autistic is available now at all good bookshops and at Ethical Shop.
The Women’s Prize shortlist 2022 was described by The Guardian Opinion as a ‘show of strength for a small island. News that Lisa Allen-Agostini’s debut novel, The Bread the Devil Knead, has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction might be a cause for celebration in her native Trinidad, but it will come as no great surprise there. This small Caribbean island, the larger of the two-island state it forms with Tobago – with a combined population of just 1.4 million – has long punched far above its weight, producing the groundbreaking historian CLR James, as well as two Nobel laureates.
Read the full Opinion piece here.
Continuing our Pride Month celebrations, this week we caught up with Lucy Fry and looked back at her memoir Easier Ways To Say I Love You.
Alex Thornber: I thought it would be fun to revisit Easier Ways to Say I Love You and was wondering where the first seeds of that project came from?
Lucy Fry: The project began as I tried to process some of my very intense sexual and romantic experiences about five years ago, during a specific time in my life where I felt like something enormous was happening in my life, both internally and externally. I used writing as a way of getting it out of my head. I never at that stage expected it to become a book, but then it grew, as I started to link up my current behaviours and desires with certain elements of my past. A memoir began to take hold. I was also reading lots of memoir at the time – female writers like Maggie Nelson, Ariel Levy and Deborah Levy and was massively inspired by their style and passion.
AT: The book is exquisitely honest, even about the uncomfortable parts, did you have to really push yourself to put it all on the page, or did you hold back at all?
LF: There is so much that I ended up cutting. People find that hard to believe because the book is so raw as it is, but really, I edited it a huge amount. I always try to write initially like nobody will read it, or at least not worry about that bit. Then, when I edit, I ask myself if any discomfort I feel about this being read is actually worth going through – does it make the work better? Might it help me and my readers grow in some way? Will it seriously harm another? Once I have answers to these questions I can choose whether to follow that discomfort through or cut certain bits. There’s no doubt that I experienced a re-visitation of a lot of shame when this book was published, though. Looking back, I wonder if I did put myself too far out there as it hurt a lot to hear some people’s reactions, but it felt essential at the time to be brutally honest.
AT: Your story is a vital addition to the wider narrative of queer lives but how has the book’s reception, or legacy, impacted you personally?
LF: I think sadly that the book wasn’t read by as many people as it might have been. I have however received some emails from people who were profoundly personally impacted by the story and the honesty. Even one email like that makes it feel worth the uncomfortable exposure, somehow. I do feel though that I’ve now moved on from that stage in my life and wouldn’t write in the same way again, or I don’t need to write about those same things anymore. It was certainly an excruciatingly healing act; painful, important, heart-opening.
AT: What has been the most rewarding part of the process for you?
LF: The most rewarding part was piecing the sections together in a way that fitted with my therapeutic process, rather than the way that suited narrative specifically. Or rather, it was about structuring something in an intuitive way that fits with the way that healing from trauma works, rather than suits a typical narrative structure. I love playing with form. I love finding new ways to tell stories.
AT: Are you working on anything at the moment?
LF: This year in February I had another non-fiction book published called Love and Choice. This book told a little of my story but mostly focused on the stories of others who had gone through difficult or eye-opening relationship journeys, and also incorporated my understanding and experience as a psychotherapist. It’s somewhere between narrative nonfiction and self development. Now I am playing around with ideas, figuring out where to go next.
AT: If you could recommend one book for people to read this pride month, what would it be?
LF: I think for me, The Dream House by Carmen Machado is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. It happens to be a queer memoir and that’s really important too, but I don’t want to say it’s one of the best queer memoirs as that implies it doesn’t stand up against any other memoirs in the same way, and it really, really does.
Easier Ways To Say I Love You is available now at all good bookshops and at Ethical Shop.
Lisa, we are so proud of you! Many thanks and congratulations again to Lisa Allen-Agostini, whose brilliant The Bread The Devil Knead was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Mary Ann Sieghart, chair of the judges, described it as ‘a deeply humane story set in Trinidad which immerses the reader and is full of warmth and humour and sadness’. Lisa is shown here with winner Ruth Ozeki who said of her fellow Women’s Prize shortlisted authors: ‘These are some of the most amazing women writers I have ever met and it’s been such a privilege to be here. Somehow you [the Women’s Prize] make us all feel like winners, and we ARE all winners.’ Congratulations, Ruth, and of course, Lisa, you ARE our winner!
Photo © Margaret Busby
Happy Pride Month!
Here at Myriad one of our driving tenets has been to amplify and spotlight underrepresented voices, and the LGBTQIA+ community is at the heart of that. So this Pride Month we wanted to share with you some of the amazing books we have published over the years by authors who identify with the LGBTQIA+ community.
This week our Book Sales and Promotions Co-ordinator Alex Thornber had a chat with author Kate Charlesworth to discuss her landmark graphic history Sensible Footwear.
Alex Thornber: I thought it would be fun to revisit Sensible Footwear and was wondering where the first seeds of that project came from?
Kate Charlesworth: I thought about making an LGBTQ+ history years before I began work on Sensible Footwear. When I came out in the early 1970s, the gay scene was changing before my eyes, and I hoped, vaguely perhaps, that somehow it would be recorded.
I began to think I might do something about it myself around the turn of the millennium, because I wanted a record in pictures – I felt words alone could never be enough to describe the LGBTQ+ community…
I started making occasional notes around 2007.
AT: The book itself is beautifully detailed. How long did it take to complete?
KC: Eventually a script began to come into focus and with the firm but fair guidance of Myriad’s Corinne Pearlman, in 2016 I began to lay out the (320) pages and carry on to final artwork for publication in 2019.
AT: In the years since sensible footwear was published, it has become in many ways an iconic piece in LGBTQIA+ literature as well as history, how does the books legacy make you feel? Did you see it coming?
KC: Thinking of the book as an icon in itself is rather awe-inspiring. I was pretty sure there was nothing else around like it; and I did it partly because I wanted to read an illustrated LGBTQ+ history myself (which is how I thought of it in the early stages before it the memoir strand became such an integral part of the story).
I hoped it would be well received, and I thought it might be important because it was unusual – probably unique in terms of lesbian history – so if it is an icon, I’m thrilled.
AT: What has been the most rewarding part of the process for you?
KC: Crossing off the last page of the book on my progress wall chart, and finally holding a copy of the finished book were standout moments but the most rewarding aspect has been comments from readers who’ve been moved by the book, or found it helpful, or bought it for their children – or just plain loved it. I couldn’t have foreseen this and I am beyond words.
AT: Are you working on anything at the moment?
KC: I’ve applied for funding for the next book from Creative Scotland (who generously supported Sensible Footwear) and it will address issues that affect absolutely all of us – and it’s funny.
Spoiler alert: it’s stuffed with lesbians.
AT: If you could recommend one book for people to read this Pride month, what would it be?
KC: Alison Child’s Tell Me I’m Forgiven : The Story of Forgotten Stars Gwen Farrar & Norah Blaney (Tollington Press, 2019). I enjoyed this very much. Lesbian history, show business, classy dyke social circles, celebrity gossip. I want to read it again now.
Sensible Footwear is available now at all good bookshops and at Ethical Shop.
Congratulations to Sabba Khan who has won the Jhalak Prize for book of the year by a British writer of colour with her graphic memoir The Roles We Play. Judge Mary Jean Chan said she read and reread the book, and found it to be ‘a powerful, moving and thought-provoking story which shimmers with hard-earned wisdom and wonder, one that is beautifully written and vividly drawn’.
Magnificent performance by Brazilian theatre group Coletivo Rubra of Dedicated to All the Others, based on Una‘s graphic novel Becoming Unbecoming on sexual violence. Now available online with illuminating Q&A afterwards and a slide show memorial to the victims of the Yorkshire Ripper.
