A quick update on a few things that have been going on / went on before the world got shut down.
On Saturday 15th March, I read my short story Blue In The Condition Of Blue at the Guille-Alles Library as part of Sneakaway To The Library, a Vale Earth Fair event. As well as listening to me ramble on for a few minutes, people were able to listen to some poetry and some musicians in what was a very lovely and sedate evening at the top of the library, with lots of hand sanitiser and a can bar.
Sneakaway was the launch for the Earth Fair Zine, the first of its kind, which was published to celebrate the first Sneakaway stage at last August’s Vale Earth Fair. This playfully put together little book contains my story An Ambulance For Inanimate Objects, which was among the stories I read at the festival back in August. There’s some other great stuff in it too – stories, poems, artwork. Illustrations pop in and out around the words, giving the whole thing a lot of character.
Another recent Guernsey publication is Zone 4, the fourth edition of the island’s comic anthology Zone. I have yet to see a copy in the flesh but I saw the proofs and it looked to be a pretty incredible explosion of colour, story, madness, beauty. Included in Zone 4 is a version of my story Erraticism illustrated by Mikal Dyas. Erraticism was previously published a number of years ago as a straight-ahead words-on-a-page story – Mikal’s illustrations have given it a new lease of life (and he invented some new days, which maybe we should all adopt now, especially in this time when no one really knows what day it is).
Finally, FAO anyone who is in Guernsey and writes / has written / would like to write… I have, in recent months, started to run a monthly writing workshop at the Guille-Alles on a Tuesday evening. If you are interested in getting involved please give me a shout – though it is unclear at this point when the next one will go ahead, we will try and keep something going online during the interim lockdown period.
Digestive Press 