March 2018
Brixton BookJam March 2018 – we heard from a brilliant range of writers – and here they are!
Stevyn Colgan is the author of eight books and is a popular speaker at events such as TED, QEDcon, Nudgestock, Ig Nobel Prizes, Hay Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and many more. He has appeared on numerous podcasts and radio shows including Freakonomics, Saturday Live, Do The Right Thing, No Such Thing As A Fish and Josie Long’s Short Cuts. For more than a decade he was one of the ‘elves’ that write the multi award-winning TV series QI and was part of the writing team that won the Rose D’Or for BBC Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/stevyn-colgan/
Guy Gunaratne is a novelist, documentary filmmaker and technologist. As a video journalist he has covered human rights stories in post-conflict areas around the world. His debut novel In Our Mad and Furious City is released by Tinder Press on May 3rd 2018. You can find him @guygunaratne
Tony White’s latest novel is The Fountain in the Forest (Faber and Faber). He is the author of five previous novels including Foxy-T and Shackleton’s Man Goes South, and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans, as well as novellas and numerous short stories published in journals, exhibition catalogues, and anthologies. White was creative entrepreneur in residence in the French department of King’s College London, and has been writer in residence at London’s Science Museum and the UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. He recently collaborated with artists Blast Theory on the libraries live-streaming project A Place Free Of Judgement, and currently chairs the board of London’s award-winning arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm.
http://pieceofpaperpress.com | @tony_white_
Travel writer, book reviewer, and author, Noo Saro-Wiwa was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England. Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta, 2012) is her first book. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012, and named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, 2012. The Guardian newspaper included it among its 10 Best Contemporary Books on Africa in 2012. She has written book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for The Guardian newspaper, The Independent, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Prospect magazine and La Repubblica, among others.
https://www.noosarowiwa.com | @noosarowiwa
Mark Hill has been a journalist and a BBC music and entertainment radio producer. He now sits in his attic office writing novels. His crime debut His First Lie, the first in a series featuring troubled North London detectives Ray Drake and Flick Crowley was published last year by Sphere Books, and the second in the series, It Was Her, comes out in May. markhillauthor.com
Julia Bell is a writer and Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck College, London where she is the Course Director of the Creative Writing MA. She is the author of three novels, most recently The Dark Light, the co editor of the Creative Writing Coursebook as well as three volumes of short stories. She also takes photographs, writes poetry, short stories, occasional essays and journalism. She divides her time between London and Berlin.
Sarah Robertson is writing her first novel after a career as a journalist and a Government press adviser. Dalston Girls tells the story of three friends leading a double life, keeping up appearances in the corporate world while capitalising on the benefits from their criminal pursuits. Despite promises of protection from established mafia, threats emerge from Albanian rivals and the law, both of which swoop increasingly close to their work and filter uncomfortably into their personal lives. Defying stereotypes in the male-dominated theatre of violence, their strength comes from their confidence and trust in each other. But when this erodes, their mission becomes one of survival, in a world where knowing your friends from your enemies is the difference between life and death.
Chris Chalmers is the author of Dinner At The Happy Skeleton, Five To One, Light From Other Windows, and for children, Gillian Vermillion — Dream Detective. He lives in South-West London with his partner, a quite famous concert pianist. Chris has been the understudy on Mastermind, swum with iguanas and shared a pizza with Donnie Brasco. Aside from his novels, his proudest literary achievement is making Martina Navratilova ROFLAO on Twitter.
www.chrischalmers.net | @CCsw19
Today South London, Tomorrow South London
South London blog, Deserter, is an alt guide to the wonky wonderland south of the river. Its authors, Dirty South and Dulwich Raider, record off-beat days out and urban adventures featuring local cemeteries, galleries, hospitals, pubs and disabled toilet partitions, often in the company of their volatile dealer, Half-life, and the much nicer Roxy.
Despite the fact that it might take a bit of actual work, they have reached an agreement with a publisher, Unbound, to release a collection of these stories, including new and updated material, in book form.
https://unbound.com/books/deserter/
IVY NGEOW was born and raised in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. A graduate of the Middlesex University Writing MA programme, Ivy won the 2005 Middlesex University Press Literary Prize out of almost 1500 entrants worldwide. Her fiction has appeared in Silverfish New Writing anthologies twice, The New Writer and on the BBC World Service. Her story ‘Funny Mountain’ was published by Fixi Novo in an anthology Hungry in Ipoh. Her debut novel, Cry of the Flying Rhino, won the Proverse Prize 2016. Her second novel, Heart of Glass will be out in March 2018 on Unbound.
www.writengeow.com / @ivyngeow
Zelda Rhiando was born in Dublin and lives in South London with her husband, two daughters and four cats. She and is one of the founders of the Brixton BookJam. Fukushima Dreams is her second novel. www.badzelda.com / @badzelda
