The eight titles selected for Fiction Uncovered 2013 will be announced at a launch event in Soho, London by the Chair of Judges, Louise Doughty. The Fiction Uncovered 2013 books are:

• All the Beggars Riding by Lucy Caldwell (Faber & Faber)
• How I Killed Margaret Thatcher by Anthony Cartwright (Tindal Street Press, Profile)
• Black Bread White Beer by Niven Govinden (The Friday Project, Harper Collins)
• The Village by Nikita Lalwani (Viking, Penguin)
• The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon (Fig Tree, Penguin)
• The Heart Broke In by James Meek (Canongate)
• Orkney by Amy Sackville (Granta)
• Secrecy by Rupert Thomson (Granta)

Alongside Louise Doughty as chair, the Fiction Uncovered 2013 judging panel includes Sandeep Mahal, Programme Manager at the Reading Agency, Lynne Hatwell, who blogs at dovegreyreader, and writer Courttia Newland.

Each writer will receive a handmade binding of their book by artist bookbinders Kate Rochester and Kaori Maki, and a Kobo Glo e-reader kindly supplied by Kobo in a new partnership for 2013 and a six month membership at The Union in Soho.

Chair of judges, Louise Doughty comments:

‘It was a great privilege to judge the 2013 Fiction Uncovered promotion and to be reminded just how varied, wide-ranging and fascinating British fiction is at the moment.  It was a hard whittling process and there were many excellent titles we weren’t able to include.  The eight books we eventually selected range from compelling historical mysteries by Rupert Thomson and Nell Leyshon through contemporary dramas of humour and power by James Meek, Anthony Cartwright, Nikita Lalwani and Niven Govinden to books by Lucy Caldwell and Amy Sackville that challenge the very nature of storytelling.  What all these eight authors share is the ability to create a unique voice for their own gripping narrative – each novel here is compulsive in its own individual way and there really is something for everyone on this list.’

Theeight Fiction Uncovered titles will be part of a summer promotion supported by retailers including Foyles, Kobo, iBookstore, Amazon, Waterstones and independent bookstores across the UK. Posters and Fiction Uncovered tote bags are also being made available to retailers, libraries and other literary organisations across the UK.

In a new partnership for 2013, Kobo has kindly supplied eight Kobo Glo ereaders as gifts to the eight selected authors. Kobo will also feature all eight Fiction Uncovered titles on its website and feature the titles in an email newsletter the week of the announcement.

This year Fiction Uncovered is also partnering with Nudge, the new book discovery website and app selling titles on the iBookstore. Nudge will be hosting content relating to all eight titles as well as featuring the promotion as a whole and in the Nudge Weekly e-mail to its 13,000 subscribers.

Fiction Uncovered is also working this year for the first time with NetGalley, where international book reviewers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers and other professional readers can request digital access to a selection of this year’s Fiction Uncovered titles.

The annual bespoke Fiction Uncovered window at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London (by designer Sam Oakley), will run for 2 weeks from 16 May and Foyles will also be promoting the titles on its website. Independent retailers are invited to enter a Fiction Uncovered window competition from 16 May with the winner announced in Independent Booksellers Week.

Fiction Uncovered events will also run during Independent Booksellers Week 2013 (29 June – 6 July) and will include Fiction Uncovered FM at Foyles, the FM and digital pop-up radio station which launched for the first time last year. The FM radio station will feature content around the eight selected titles as well as a much wider range of British and translated fiction. Fiction Uncovered FM 2012 attracted 10,000 listeners over its four day run and included live interviews with Jake Arnott, Stella Duffy, Philip Hensher, Geoff Dyer and David Baddiel.

Each judge has championed two of the shortlisted titles and from 20May the Fiction Uncovered website will feature short films about each of the titles, alongside readings and interviews with the selected authors at http://www.fictionuncovered.co.uk/.

For more information about Fiction Uncovered 2013 please contact Laura Creyke at laura@theliteraryplatform.com

Now in its third year, Fiction Uncovered celebrates and promotes eight living British writers of any age who have already published at least one novel or short story collection. It is funded by the National Lottery and supported by Arts Council England.  The 2013 Fiction Uncovered selection will be announced on Thursday 16 May 2013 by chair of judges and author Louise Doughty, Sandeep Mahal, (Programme Manager at the Reading Agency), Lynne Hatwell (who blogs at dovegreyreader) and writer Courttia Newland.

Criteria

·      Entries will be judged by the Fiction Uncovered team

·      Please send a minimum x 2 high-resolution JPEG files depicting your display to hello@fictionuncovered.com, by the midday on 1 July 2013.

·      By entering your photos into this competition you consent to us using them on the Fiction Uncovered website and social media outlets.

Posters and Fiction Uncovered tote bags will be available to retailers, libraries, reading groups and other literary organisations across the UK. The posters will be downloadable from the Fiction Uncovered website on 16 May and the tote bags can be ordered from hello@fictionuncovered.com

Now in its third year, Fiction Uncovered celebrates and promotes eight living British writers of any age who have already published at least one novel or short story collection. It is funded by the National Lottery and supported by Arts Council England.  The 2013 Fiction Uncovered selection will be announced on Thursday 16 May 2013 by chair of judges Louise Doughty. To date the promotion has been supported by retailers Waterstones, Foyles, Amazon and iBookstore, as well as independent retailers across the UK.

Kobo, a global leader in eReading, has donated eight Kobo Glo eReaders as gifts to the eight selected authors who will be announced on 16 May 2013. In addition, Kobo will feature the eight Fiction Uncovered titles on its eBookstore at Kobo.com.

In addition, Nudge – the new book discovery website and app selling titles on the iBookstore – will be hosting specially recorded video content relating to all eight selected titles as well as featuring the eight book titles in the Nudge Weekly e-mail to its 8,000+ subscribers. Over 12,500 keen readers have now downloaded the Nudge app.

Fiction Uncovered is also working this year for the first time with NetGalley, where international book reviewers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers and other professional readers can request digital access to a selection of this year’s Fiction Uncovered titles.

Continued support for Fiction Uncovered comes from Foyles Bookshops and independent retailers across the UK working with the Booksellers Association. For the third year running, a bespoke Fiction Uncovered window will be on display for two weeks at the Foyles Charing Cross Road store, London from 16 May. Foyles will also be helping to promote the eight Fiction Uncovered titles on its website.

Following its successful debut in 2012, Foyles will also host Fiction Uncovered FM for a second year, a pop-up radio station during Independent Booksellers Week (29 June – 6 July). The FM and digital radio station will feature content around the eight selected titles as well as a much wider range of British and translated fiction. Fiction Uncovered FM 2012 attracted 10,000 listeners over its four day run and included live interviews with Jake Arnott, Stella Duffy, Philip Hensher, Geoff Dyer and David Baddiel.

Independent retailers are invited to enter a Fiction Uncovered window competition from 16 May 2013 with the winner announced in Independent Booksellers Week. The independent bookseller which puts on the best window display featuring the eight titles and celebrating British writing will win a luxury hamper Fortnum and Mason.

Posters and Fiction Uncovered tote bags will be available to retailers, libraries, reading groups and other literary organisations across the UK. The posters will be downloadable from the Fiction Uncovered website on 16 May and the tote bags can be ordered from hello@fictionuncovered.com.

Alongside Louise Doughty as chair, the Fiction Uncovered 2013 judging panel includes Sandeep Mahal, Programme Manager at the Reading Agency, Lynne Hatwell, who blogs at dovegreyreader, and writer Courttia Newland.

Each judge has championed two of the shortlisted titles and from 20May the Fiction Uncovered website will feature short films about each of the titles, alongside readings and interviews with the selected authors at http://www.fictionuncovered.co.uk/.

For more information about Fiction Uncovered 2013 please contact Laura Creyke

Tinder Press was conceived with a very clear identity, as a focused but diverse list of books with one crucial quality in common: the ability to inspire a passionate response in readers.  We had in mind a list that felt hand-picked, fiction that readers would want to treasure, and to share.

So we are thrilled that our first list feels every bit as vibrant and varied as we had hoped.  From Maggie O’Farrell’s tender and wryly humorous portrait of a family in crisis in INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, to Lavanya Sankaran’s depiction of the bustle and urgency of contemporary Bangalore in THE HOPE FACTORY, to Michel Rostain’s extraordinary and imaginative reaction to the death of a child in Michel Rostain each of these books offers a reading experience we feel is truly unique.

Tinder Press is also all about creating a community around its books with an approach to publishing that feels fresh and very open.  Its Publisher, Mary-Anne Harrington, and Associate Publisher, Leah Woodburn, hope you’ll want to be part of that, and to share in the excitement as they begin publishing in spring 2013.

David Park

David Park’s most recent novel is The Light of Amsterdam, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection. He was the winner of the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, and three-time winner of the University of Ulster’s McCrea Literary Award. He has twice been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award.

Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, translated by Robin Buss (Penguin Classics).

“This novel by a writer who died tragically at the age of 27 in the First World War is one of my all-time favourite books and brilliantly portrays the universal human desire to find once more the happiness that has eluded us.”

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky translated by Sandra Smith (Vintage).

“Only discovered by her daughter in the 1990s, this unfinished novel radiates with power and is given an added poignancy by the fact that the author perished in the Holocaust.”

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker translated by David Colmer (Vintage)

“This is a delicate and subtle portrayal of loneliness and the struggle of a son to know his father.”

Cressida Connolly

Cressida Connolly was born in 1960. She is an author, journalist and reviewer. She is the author of My Former Heart, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection, The Happiest Days and The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans.

“I feel huge and unqualified gratitude to translators, who receive very little limelight in return for what amounts to a public service: making it possible to read wonderful things written in other languages.  Without them I would never have been able to read some of the books I have loved and kept by me, the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Pablo Neruda, of the Chinese poets Li Po and Wang Wei, the Japanese Basho and of course the stories of my favourite writer, Anton Chekhov.

“There are lots of translations of Rilke, but the very best is that by Stephen Cohn, published by Carcanet.  As well as the Duino Elegies, he translated the Sonnets to Orpheus along with Letters to A Young Poet.  Anyone who wants to write should read these letters.  Actually, anyone who wants to live – to live from the heart as much as the mind – should read them. Stephen Cohn, a man of gentle humour, intelligence and sweetness, died only weeks ago. His Rilke is his legacy.

“New Finnish Grammar, translated by Judith Landry from Diego Marani‘s original (Dedalus Books, 2011), is a fantastic novel.  And I have been haunted by the strange atmosphere and beauty of Judith Hermann’s Alice (Clerkenwell Press, 2011), translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo.”

Susanna Jones

Susanna Jones grew up in Yorkshire and studied drama at London University. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages and has won the CWA John Creasey Dagger, a Betty Trask Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. When Nights Were Cold, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection, is published by Pan Macmillan.

The Lover by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray (Flamingo, 1994).

“The prose is spare and the structure precise but this autobiographical novel of a young girl in French Indochina in the 1930s is charged with emotion and is uncompromising in its vision. One of my favourite novels.”

You Are Not Like Other Mothers by Angelika Schrobsdorff, translated by Steven Rendall (Europa Editions, 2012).

“The story of a Jewish woman (the writer’s mother), her many lovers, her children and life in Berlin through the roaring 20s, the rise of Nazism, the War, their exile to Bulgaria and struggle to survive. I found this compelling and devastating.”

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Tyler Royall (Penguin Classics, 2003).

“Royall’s recent translation of this 1000-year-old novel of court life in medieval Japan is thorough and instructive but also captivating and a pleasure to read. (The other major translations, both excellent, are by Arthur Waley (1920s) and Edward Seidsticker (1976).)”

Dan Rhodes

Dan Rhodes was born in 1972. He is the author of This is Life, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection, Anthropology, Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love, Timoleon Vieta Come Home, Gold, Little Hands Clapping and, writing as Danuta de Rhodes, The Little White Car. In 2003 he was named by Granta magazine as one of their Twenty Best of Young British Novelists and in 2010 by the Daily Telegraph as one of their Best British Novelists Under Forty. He is the winner of many awards including the Author’s Club First Novel Award and the E.M. Forster Award.

Melog by Mihangel Morgan, translated by Christopher Meredith (Seren, 2005).

“Written in Welsh, this funny, strange and touching novel is an almost entirely undiscovered delight. Well worth seeking out.”

Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau, translated by Barbara Wright (Penguin Classics 2001).

“Many years ago, reading this got me wanting to write daft Parisian romps. Queneau had a long association with Barbara Wright, and his linguistic playfulness survives the leap from language to language.”

Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb translated by Adriana Hunter (Faber and Faber, 2004).

“Amélie Nothomb’s books are brilliant, and refreshingly short. If you’ve not read her yet, this tale of a young Belgian woman’s decline and fall within a Japanese company is a good place to start.”

Peter Benson

Born in 1956, Peter Benson was educated in Ramsgate, Canterbury and Exeter. His first novel, The Levels, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. This was followed by A Lesser Dependency, winner of the Encore award, and The Other Occupant, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award. He has also published short stories, screenplays and poetry, some adapted for TV, radio and many translated into other languages. His most recent novel, Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection, is published by Alma Books.

The Discovery of Slowness by Sten Nadolny, translated from the German by Ralph Freedman, (Canongate, 2004).

“A paen to the philosophy of slowness, a novelization of an Arctic explorer’s life, a meditation, a love story; this novel is all these things and more, and Freedman takes the translator’s art to new heights of clarity.”

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō, translated from the Japanese by Nobuyuki Yuasa, (Penguin, 2005).

“No one has combined travelogue, poetry and philosophical musings with such beauty; even though these pieces were written over 300 years ago, they are as fresh and contemporary as ever.”

Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova, translated from the Russian by Richard McKane, (Bloodaxe, 1989).

“These luminous translations offer proof that the repression and vilification Akhmatova suffered were no match for the power, imagination and courage of her poetry.”

Doug Johnstone

Doug Johnstone is the author of three novels: Hit and Run, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection, Smokeheads and The Ossians. Writer-in-residence at the University of Strathclyde, he is also a freelance journalist, a songwriter and musician, and has a PhD in nuclear physics. He lives in Edinburgh.

“My favourite classic book in translation is probably The Outsider by Albert Camus, translated from the French by Joseph Loredo. I immediately loved the deadpan prose style, the less-is-more, stripped-down approach to Mersault’s story – a short, sharp shock of psychological, existential genius.

“More recently I loved Jens Lapidus’s Easy Money, the first of his Stockholm trilogy, translated from Swedish by Astri von Arbin Ahlander (Macmillan). It’s a fantastic James Ellroy-esque thriller looking at the seedy underbelly of Stockholm life. Interestingly, I just did a book event with Jens, who said the original translation they commissioned had to be thrown out because, although it was grammatically correct, it failed to capture the rhythm and style of his original. The translation they went with is fantastic, full of bounce and street-sass.

“And I’ve really enjoyed all of Arnaldur Indridason’s crime novels, from Tainted Blood onwards (Harvill Secker). These were originally translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder who sadly passed away, but they’ve found an able replacement in Victoria Cribb, who captures the dour, black humour of the Icelandic mindset brilliantly.”

Jill Dawson

Jill Dawson is the author of Trick of the Light, Magpie, Fred and Edie, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize, Wild Boy, Watch Me Disappear, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize, The Great Lover, a Richard and Judy Summer Read in 2009, and Lucky Bunny, a Fiction Uncovered 2012 selection. In addition she has edited six anthologies of short stories and poetry. Born in Durham, Jill Dawson grew up in Yorkshire. She has held many fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, where she taught on the MA in Creative Writing course. In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work.

“In my twenties I read a lot of poetry, much of it translated.  I loved Chinese folk poetry for its simplicity, attention to nature, and plainness of language; also a sort of deadpan tone.  The poems I read were often translated by poet Kenneth Rexroth, and in retrospect I feel that the tone was perhaps not always there in the originals (how could I know since I don’t speak the language) but something Rexroth achieved by not striving for a false rhyme and by being faithful to meaning and to the vernacular voice. This early reading had a big influence on my own writing: I always prefer a plain word to a showy one and I listen for a cadence that I hear in my head and try and put on the page.

“Another favourite was Ana Blandiana’s The Hour of Sand translated by Peter Jay and Anca Cristofovici  (Anvil Press) – I was given this book of poetry by Romanian poet, Ana Blandiana, by the first man I was ever in love with, and my copy still has his name inside in his fine handwriting.  (‘Perhaps someone is dreaming me – that’s why my gestures are so soft and unfinished…’ Blandiana writes).  Another occasion where a poet translated a poet (Peter Jay, based in Greenwich) – these are haunting and strange and fly me back immediately to that time in my life.

“Lastly there was Anna Swir – another vernacular poet translated from the Polish by Grazyna Baran and Margaret Marshment.  Fat Like The Sun – this was a Women’s Press book that I adored, also during my formative writing years.  The poem “Patriarchy” had an impact on me. I gave both my sons my own surname as a result, not their father’s surname! Anna Swir writes:

I gave days and nights by the thousand…

But my child bears

The surname

of a man.

Of course, actually my sons (who have different fathers) both have my father’s name – Dawson – but I think of it as mine.  It’s a start.”

Looking for warmth and inspiration? Join us at London’s most intimate literary event and escape into another world with a range of wonderful readings from the brilliant short story writers Adam Marek, Chris Paling, David Vann and Zoe Lambert.

Saturday, 27th October, 6-8pm at: The Society Club, 12 Ingestre Place, Soho, W1F OJF. £5 on the door. RSVP here.

Lawrence Scott: In conversation and reading from his new novel, Light Falling on Bamboo

Thursday 25th October, 6-8pm, The Writers’ Room, Millburn House, University of Warwick

Prize-winning Trinidadian author Lawrence Scott’s new novel, Light Falling on Bamboo (published by Tindal Street Press), is inspired by the paintings, the life and times of Michel Jean Cazabon, Trinidad’s most important 19th Century Painter.

“In this intimate, compassionate portrait of 19th-century Trinidad, Lawrence Scott presents a gripping tale of a world burdened by its secrets and exposed by its art.” – Earl Lovelace

“Lawrence Scott deftly paints a portrait of a man deeply split on every level . . . This novel shows us the dark “truth of an age” in a small corner of the New World, once dependent on slave labour.” – Monique Roffey, The Independent

Lawrence Scott was born on a sugar-cane estate in Trinidad. His novels include Witchbroom (1992), Aelred’s Sin (1998) and Night Calypso (2004). He has edited Golconda: Our Voices Our Lives, an anthology of oral-histories and other stories and poems from the sugar-belt in Trinidad (2009). He lives in London and Port of Spain.

Lawrence Scott discusses Light Falling on Bamboo in this short film by Karen Martinez, the Trinidad filmmaker of Chutney in Yuh Soca shown on Channel 4.

Copies of Light Falling on Bamboo will be available to buy on the night and for signing.

This event is free and open to all. If you are interested in attending please email Michael Niblett (m.niblett@warwick.ac.uk)

New Beacon Books and the George Padmore Institute are delighted to invite you to celebrate the publication of Lawrence Scott’s new book, Light Falling on Bamboo, published by Tindal Street Press. Set in 1848, Light Falling on Bamboo dramatises the life of renowned artist Michel Jean Cazabon as he returns home to Trinidad from Europe to be at his beloved mother’s deathbed.

‘This novel shows us the dark “truth of an age” in a small corner of the New World, once dependent on slave labour. Scott … shows us a world full of prejudice and social injustice, and we feel uncomfortable throughout. And also, like Cazabon, we fall in love numerous times with this complicated world.’– Monique Roffey, Independent

‘In this intimate, compassionate portrait of 19th century Trinidad, Lawrence Scott presents a gripping tale of a world burdened by its secrets and exposed by its art.’ – Earl Lovelace

Lawrence Scott, prizewinning novelist and short-story writer, was born on a sugarcane estate in Trinidad. His previous novels are Witchbroom (1992), Aelred’s Sin (1998), and Night Calypso (2004). In 2009 he edited Golconda: Our Voices Our Lives, an anthology of oral-histories and other stories and poems from the sugarbelt in Trinidad. Over the years, he has combined teaching with writing and he divides his time between London and Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Anne Walmsley is a British-born writer specializing in Caribbean art and literature. Her publications include Guyana Dreaming: the Art of Aubrey Williams (1990), The Caribbean Artists Movement: A Literary and Cultural History 1966-1972 (1992) and Art of the Caribbean, an introduction (2010).

Lawrence Scott’s book will be on sale on the night and for signing.

Light Falling on Bamboo, hardback £12.99, ISBN 978 1 906994 39 6

Lawrence Scott discusses Light Falling on Bamboo in this short film by Karen Martinez, the Trinidad filmmaker of Chutney in Yuh Soca shown on Channel 4.

For more information or to book a place, please contact New Beacon Books at newbeaconbooks@btconnect.com or tel. 020 7272 4889

New Beacon Books and George Padmore Institute, 76 Stroud Green Road, London N4 3EN, (nearest station Finsbury Park – underground and British Rail)

The George Padmore Institute (GPI) is an archive, educational research and information centre housing materials relating mainly to the black community of Caribbean, African and Asian descent in Britain and continental Europe. One of its main current activities is its HLFfunded project ‘Dream to Change the World’, which is cataloguing and archiving the papers and other materials of the late John La Rose, founder of New Beacon Books and the GPI.