TULCA 2016 — 11 Nov

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I’m looking forward to taking ‘The Holborn Cenotaph’ and other stories to TULCA 2016 in Galway. Here’s the blurb:

Acclaimed London author Tony White reads short stories including ‘The Holborn Cenotaph’ – ‘Super dry, dark and funny. Glasnost for UK cops’ (Tim Etchells). At once a satirical performance, a protest and an act of radical remembrance, ‘The Holborn Cenotaph’ proposes a shocking new use for the high-rise tower of Holborn Police Station in central London. Tony will also be reading from the 1999 ‘avant pulp’ novel Charlieunclenorfolktango, and a 2014 work ‘High-Lands’, performed here for the first time with live musical accompaniment from New Pope. New Pope is a critically acclaimed songwriter dealing in melodic dream pop, and sometimes folk. Onstage he is joined by Colm Bohan (drums) and Stephen Connolly (organ/guitar) to create an immersive musical experience.

Followed with a screening of Alan Phelan’s 2012 short Include Me Out of the Partisans Manifesto, in which a suburban couple battle through the apparent obliteration of their shared experience as their DVD collection is painstakingly broken up and recycled. The film is based on a short story by White that was originally commissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art as a fictional response to Phelan’s art practice.

The evening concludes into the night with New Pope taking the stage!

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11 Nov. Performance: Tony White accompanied by New Pope
Reading / Screening / Musical Performance
Date: Nov 11
Time: 7.30 – 11.30pm
Venue: Galway Mechanics’ Institute, Middle Srteet
Tickets: €5, booking required, limited capacity—BOOK TICKETS

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Zombies Ate My Library

[Updated March 2017]

Zombies Ate My Library is the new novella by Tony White, that has been shortlisted for ‘Best Novella’ in the Saboteur Awards 2017—VOTE HERE…

During 2016, author Tony White worked with multi-award-winning artists Blast Theory, and young people in libraries in Telford, Worcester and Cannock, to re-imagine libraries, storytelling and their place in the world.

The project was called A Place Free Of Judgement, and on 29 October 2016, over the course of nine hours from 3pm to midnight, the young people took control of their local libraries and performed live to a worldwide audience via an interactive live stream.

A Place Free Of Judgement by Blast Theory and Tony White included a specially commissioned novella by White for Young Adult (YA) and general readers.

Set against a backdrop of library cuts and closures, Zombies Ate My Library follows the lives of four young people in the West Midlands – Alice, Gareth, Tommy and Rukhsana – as they plot a sleepover in a haunted library. What could possibly go wrong?

Zombies Ate My Library was first broadcast in its entirety as part of the A Place Free Of Judgement live stream on 29 October 2016, and published in paperback on 21 February 2017. Tony has given live readings from Zombies Ate My Library at Telford Southwater Library, Cannock Library, Worcester St. John’s Library, as well as at London live literature events Brixton Book Jam and the Sylvia Plath Fan Club. Forthcoming readings of Zombies Ate My Library include In Yer Ear on 16 May.

We are thrilled to announce that Zombies Ate My Library has been shortlisted in the ‘Best Novella’ category of the Saboteur Awards 2017. The winner is decided by public vote, a process that takes about one minute. PLEASE SUPPORT TONY, BLAST THEORY, AND THE TEAM BY VOTING FOR ZOMBIES ATE MY LIBRARY HERE…

BUY the limited edition paperback of Zombies Ate My Library direct from publisher Blast Theory…

Read about the project in the Guardian here…

Read about the project on The Bookseller blog here…

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A word about bookings…

A Place Free of Judgement—livestreams on 29 October 2016

main-image_apfoj-copy30 teenagers take over three libraries for one night only. On 29 October 2016, over the course of 9 hours, teenagers in Worcester, Telford and Cannock will be taking control of their local libraries, and performing live to a worldwide audience. Through a unique project supported by Arts Connect and ASCEL West Midlands, the group have been working with multi-award-winning artists Blast Theory and author Tony White to re-imagine libraries, storytelling and their place in the world. This work will come to life in a 9-hour takeover of the three libraries, starting in Telford (3pm – 6pm), then Cannock (6pm – 9pm) and ending in Worcester (9pm – midnight). As the stories build, a new story by acclaimed author Tony White also comes to life with readings every hour, and a live event in each of the three libraries.

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A Place Free of Judgement by Blast Theory and Tony White, Saturday 29 October, 3:00pm – 12:00 midnight. Log in at http://aplacefreeofjudgement.co.uk

Live readings by Tony White: 3:30pm Telford Southwater Library/ 6:30pm Cannock Library / 9:30pm Worcester, St John’s Library. Booking essential. Visit http://aplacefreeofjudgement.co.uk

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A Foxy-T Twitter trail?

Lara Pawson, author of the brilliant and just-published This is the Place to Be, is tearing pages out of my novel Foxy-T and tacking them up around London—in a good way.

Here’s one she Tweeted earlier.

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This has nothing to do with me, or perhaps it does in that Lara mentioned it and I loved the idea, but I am not involved as such, and have no idea where Lara has put the pages—although actually I’m pretty sure that I do recognise the location above.

screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-18-35-07Lara has form, too. Earlier this year she did something similar with Julian Stannard’s poetry collection What Were You Thinking—distributing the pages en route between London and the Midi-Pyrenees area of France, and followed that with pages torn from Joanna Walsh’s Hotel which were—in Joanna’s words—‘scattered in French hotels, restaurants, guestrooms…’

foxy-t_gray318cover2Part peripatetic performance, part pamphleteering, part book art, it’s a lovely, slightly Quixotic, and actually extremely elusive and ephemeral idea—distributing the pages of a book in this way, to be seen or not.

Is it also perhaps a way of externalising the reading experience, or of sharing either particular and favourite passages or a general enthusiasm? I don’t know, but I feel like I’m in great company, and when I get a chance I’ll ask Lara more about it. If I find out I’ll let you know.

screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-18-43-24As with Pawson’s previous two escapades, the pages of Foxy-T are being photographed and tweeted in situ.

This time around however, Lara has suggested an added dimension to the Foxy-T Twitter trail. She has said that the person who locates and tweets the most pages will win a signed copy of my novel. I was delighted to agree to this suggestion, and I have a copy here, ready to sign for Lara to send to the winner!

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thisistheplacefrontsmallBuy Lara Pawson’s This is the Place to Be direct from publisher CBeditions

Praise for Foxy-T

Buy Foxy-T direct from publisher Faber and Faber

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Library stories?

Q. Do you have a fond memory of a library? We’d love to hear it if so.

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I just posted on the A Place Free of Judgement blog.

A Place Free of Judgement is a libraries project that I am making with the brilliant (Golden Nica and British Interactive Media Award-winning) Blast Theory.

It has been a great privilege working with Blast Theory and running workshops with groups of young people in libraries across the West Midlands for A Place Free of Judgement. And to think about the open door to books and ideas that libraries offer to everyone.

One of the most productive sessions we’ve had making A Place Free of Judgement has been asking young people to take a few minutes to think and remember and then to write about a positive experience they have had in a library. I’d love to share some of those library stories with you now [READ MORE]

Now over to you ;)

If you have a fond memory of a library we’d love to hear about that, too. It could be your discovery of now favourite books, or about possibilities that opened up, but it could be anything. The only thing we ask is that it is something that happened to you.

Email your story to abby [at] blasttheory [dot] co [dot] uk and it might be posted on the A Place Free of Judgement site, or read out during our live interactive broadcast from the libraries in Cannock, Telford and Worcester on 29 October, from 3:00pm – midnight.

Thank you!

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A Place Free Of Judgement is a new project by Blast Theory and Tony White, developed with ASCEL West Midlands and Arts Connect. It is made in collaboration with young people and librarians in Telford and Wrekin, Worcestershire, and Staffordshire and is created in partnership with young people and librarians in Solihull, Shropshire, Dudley and the University of Worcester. The project is made with support from Arts Council England Lottery Funding, Arts Connect the Bridge organisation for the West Midlands and the University of Worcester.

A Place Free of Judgement will be livestreamed on 29 October. Log-in info etc. to follow. Stay up to date with the project by visiting blasttheory.co.uk or aplacefreeofjudgement.co.uk, and follow the hashtag #FreeOfJudgement on Twitter and Instagram.

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Shackleton’s Man Goes South

Photo: Science Museum

Photo: Science Museum

I’ll be reading from my Science Museum novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South at the Polar Museum, Cambridge on Thursday 15 September, and at the Estuary Festival 2016 in Tilbury Docks on Saturday 17 September.

With Shackleton’s Man Goes South, Tony White has written a bold novel-cum-manifesto, a prophecy, satire, and warning, and a gripping polar allegory for the era of global warming and human trafficking. In the steps of Swift, Blake and Aldous Huxley, he brings a puzzlemaster’s ingenuity, a political observer’s despair, a voracious appetite for geo-political knowledge and a storyteller’s sense to create a stark vision of a future that may be coming sooner than anyone can bear to think. Marina Warner

Shackleton’s Man Goes South was published by the Science Museum as their Atmosphere Commission 2013, and was the first novel they had ever published. Being published by the Science Museum was also a chance to experiment. The novel was published in ebook formats for free giveaway by the Museum—online and via a specially developed touchscreen ‘ebook dispenser’—and in a paperback exclusively available from the Science Museum shop. An accompanying exhibition about the novel ran in the Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery for two years until spring 2015.

You can still download the novel free in PDF from the Science Museum website here.

Photo: Science Museum

Photo: Science Museum

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The Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1ER. Thursday 15 September, 18:00 – 20:30. FREE but booking essential.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South will be in the Shorelines main auditorium, Tilbury Cruise Terminal, Ferry Road, Thurrock RM18 7NG. Saturday 17 September, 12:00 noon – 12:25. FREE — Full programme and travel info on the Shorelines site.

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Bourn again

I am thrilled to be publishing ‘Subjective Interfaces’ by UK video art pioneer Ian Bourn on Piece of Paper Press. I have greatly admired Ian’s work for a long time, and ‘Subjective Interfaces’ is an important and unflinching piece of writing. The book will be launched at PEER on Hoxton Street on Monday 19 September.

Photo: Robert Ellis

Photo: Robert Ellis

Here’s the blurb:

Piece of Paper Press and PEER are delighted to invite you to celebrate the launch of ‘Subjective Interfaces’ by Ian Bourn, a British artist best known for his pioneering work in video art from the late 1970s onwards.

Bourn uses fictional characters and the monologue form to speculate ‘how things might go’ in terms of an imagined or exaggerated autobiography, also exploring ideas of the author as the hero of his or her own story. With works such as Lenny’s Documentary (1978), Bourn established what Felicity Sparrow describes as ‘his own pantheon of imaginary tragi-comic characters, pitched somewhere between Tony Hancock and Harold Pinter’ (Luxonline, 2005). In Subjective Interfaces this process of creating fictional personas seems to be both exhausted and reversed as B finds that when he is forced by circumstances to be himself and in order to maintain his dignity and humour in face of the stigma of unemployment and workfare, the persona of the artist may be all that he has left.

The launch event will include a reading, and a screening of Ian Bourn’s Breathing Days (1992).

‘Subjective Interfaces’ by Ian Bourn is produced in a numbered limited edition of 200, of which up to 75 copies will be distributed free at the launch.

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PEER, 97-99 Hoxton St, London N1 6Q. Monday 19 September, 6:30 – 8:30. There will be a reading by Ian Bourn at 7:15.

Read more about ‘Subjective Interfaces’ by Ian Bourn on the PEER website. (Photo: Robert Ellis.)

Read more about Piece of Paper Press

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Panel beating #9 — Polar Museum

I am delighted to be giving a reading from my Science Museum novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South and taking part in a panel discussion for Ways of Knowing the Polar Regions: Past, Present and Future, at the Polar Museum in Cambridge on 15 September. Here’s the blurb:

shackleton book 512x512pxThe Arctic and Antarctic have long claimed a strong hold on the western imagination, but climate change has given these regions new prominence and meaning. How much do we know about future scenarios for these sensitive regions, and how should we tell those stories today in a way that might change the future for the better? Is the future the next frontier for explorers and storytellers?

This free public event will explore these themes with contributions from climate modeller Tamsin Edwards (Open University), oceanographer Mark Brandon (Open University), Cambridge Polar Museum curator Charlotte Connelly, poet Nick Drake (author of Arctic-themed poem cycle ‘The Farewell Glacier’) and writer Tony White (former Science Museum writer in residence and author of the Science Museum published climate change novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South). Broadcaster and writer Dallas Campbell (presenter of BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory and City in the Sky) will introduce and chair the event. It is co-organised by the University of Cambridge Polar Museum and The Mediating Change Group, which is based jointly at the Open University Geography Department and the University of Sheffield School of Architecture.

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Ways of Knowing the Polar Regions: Past, Present and Future — The Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1ER. Thursday, 15 September, 18:00 to 20:30. FREE but booking essential.

You can still download a free PDF of Shackleton’s Man Goes South from the Science Museum website.

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