It is a great thrill to see a large reproduction of the writer and artist Andrea Mason’s drawing of a Penguin paperback of Samuel Beckett’s First Love and Other Novellas – and thus a beautiful drawing of Beckett himself – on the back cover of this week’s Times Literary Supplement (No.6272, June 16 2023). The back cover of the TLS is devoted (as usual these days) to the journal’s ‘NB’ column.
The drawing is of course taken from an ongoing series of Book Drawings by Andrea. I’m very proud to have published the first twelve of these in BOOK DRAWINGS #1–12 (POPP.042) earlier this year.
The reproduction in the TLS is accompanied by short note on the history of Piece of Paper Press. With shout-outs to a few other past contributors including Tim Etchells, M John Harrison, Joanna Walsh, and Susana Medina.
It is possible, we are told, to overcomplicate the publication process. With Piece of Paper Press, which he established in 1994, Tony White avoids this danger…
TLS No.6272, 16 June 2023
The NB column is behind the TLS paywall, but as this is no longer the current issue, I hope it is okay to post a clipping here. Thanks, all.
The event also includes the launch by the Computer Arts Society of a retrospective catalogue of the work of pioneering computer artist Paul Brown.
I’m doing a half-hour set of three short pieces. I’ll kick off with ‘Plain Speaking’, my tribute to Bloomsday co-founder Brian O’Nolan, better known as Flann O’Brien, which is now collected in Nicholas Royle’s Best British Short Stories 2022 (Salt Publishing) of course.
And I’ll end with a reading not from Ulysses, but from Finnegans Wake.
It’s a great thrill to be able to take Bloomsday into the heart of the historic Bloomsbury Group (the Keynes Library is a first floor drawing room looking over Gordon Square in the former home of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell & John Maynard Keynes) especially given Virginia Woolf’s antipathy to James Joyce.
Brisk book sales (and much interesting chat) at #noiratthebar next to the Thames on Millbank in central London yesterday evening! Around twenty authors took part, and the event was part of National Crime Reading Month. It was great fun – thanks all!
I read from the opening pages of my novel Foxy-T, mainly because give or take a few weeks it’s roughly the 20th anniversary of its first publication.
Foxy-T is not usually characterised as crime fiction, except by the critic Mark Lawson who called it a ‘crime novel’ when he reviewed it on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. I think he was probably responding to a murder mystery element that hides in plain sight at the heart of the book!
Anyway, it felt right for last night. Also perhaps because I was on last (more ‘short straw’ maybe than ‘top of the bill’), so wanted to give a barnstorming performance!
Incidentally and ICYMI, any copies of Foxy-T currently showing as ‘in stock’ at Amazon may be the very last of Faber’s mass-market paperback print-run. Certainly, the copies that sold out after my reading last night were the last ones left in the Faber warehouse! So if you’d been meaning to read Foxy-T and wanted to read it in paperback, now may be your last chance to get hold of it new, for a while at least…
Of course Foxy-T is still available in Faber ebook from your favourite ebook retailer.
Come and join in the fun at The King’s Head, Crouch End! Meet some of London’s finest crime, suspense & thriller authors – hear them read from their latest books, chat and answer audience questions. We have a brilliant line-up of authors including CWA Historical Dagger winner Vaseem Khan (Midnight at Malabar House, the first in the Malabar House novels set in 1950s Bombay) and Victoria Dowd, author of The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder series – and many more prizewinning and bestselling authors. Books on sale at discounted prices; please bring cash.
From “Monkeys on Typewriters” to “Hallucinating Large Language Models”: What Might Non-Human “AI” Systems Learn from Engagement with Artists and Writers?
Come join us to celebrate Bloomsday 2023 in Bloomsbury, London in the company of pioneering computer artist, Paul Brown and celebrated writer, Tony White, author of novels including The Fountain in the Forest (Faber) as well as editor of the cult Piece of Paper Press. The evening combines performative readings, visual presentation and an ‘in conversation’ exchange between Brown and Dr Joel McKim, Director of the Vasari Centre for Art and Technology at Birkbeck. The event will also feature the launch of the print catalogue for Brown’s current and forthcoming Retrospective exhibition in London and Leicester, published by the Computer Arts Society [CAS]. This is a signed and numbered limited edition publication and will be available for purchase. Dr Bronac Ferran, contributor of a CAS-commissioned essay on Brown’s work for the catalogue, will introduce the event and moderate the discussion.
When: 16 June 2023, 18:30 — 21:00 Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
June 2023 is National Crime Reading Month – a partnership between the Crime Writers’ Assocation and The Reading Agency.
I’m doing two events so far…
First up, on 11th June I’m appearing alongside a great line-up of authors including Graham Bartlett, Katherine Black, Sheila Bugler, Anne Coates, Chris Curran, Caitlin Davies, Derek Farrell, Mick Finlay, Paul Gitsham, C.S. Green, Stacey Haber, A.J. Hill, Maxim Jakubowski, Kate London, Bonnie McBird, Howard of Warwick, Barbara Nadel, Leigh Russell, Alex Sage, Holly Seddon, Jacqueline Sutherland, Aline Templeton, P.D. Viner, and me…
Join us!
Free event | readings | book stall | murderously good company!
Piece of Paper Press is delighted to have published Coronation Day by Tim Etchells, on 6 May 2023 in a numbered limited edition of 300 copies (+ 3 signed proofs). Etchells’ previous contribution to the series was About Lisa (POPP.004, 1995).
Etchells writes:
Coronation Day is the second story I’ve done for POPP and it nods back to the first, About Lisa, in a couple of ways; adapting the form and cadence of its subtitle, whilst gleefully extending its gesture of narrative and linguistic reduction. Where About Lisa explored narrative as a sequence of short blank-yet-vivid statements, each page a micro-chapter of urban fairy-tale, Coronation Day ups the ante, eschewing the story fragment in favour of the single letter, placing just one alphabetic sign per page, whilst using the book as an elegant if cumbersome means to spell out its simple imperative statement and call to arms.
Tim Etchells is an artist and a writer based in the UK. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as leader of the world-renowned performance group Forced Entertainment and in collaboration with a range of visual artists, choreographers, and photographers. His work spans performance, video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction. Tim Etchells was winner of the Spalding Gray Award in 2016, and the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2019. Forced Entertainment won the International Ibsen Prize 2016.
All copies of ‘Coronation Day’ have now been given away.
BUT I have set aside five copies for subscribers to my relaunched newsletter, which comes out on Tuesday 9 May.
Long-time readers, friends and colleagues on here will know that over the past decade or so I’ve produced an occasional newsletter, using the medium to share book news, updates, invites to my events, etc. You may also have noticed that there hasn’t been one for a while.
I paused the newsletter in early 2020 because, in common with many freelancers working across the arts and creative industries, much of my public-facing work dried up during the Covid-19 pandemic. The things other than books – the ad hoc rolling commissions, events, appearances, residencies, etc. – that can with a lot of luck contribute to a writing life, mostly disappeared, more or less overnight.
As it happened, when Lockdown hit, I was already in a slightly less public mode than I had been around publication of The Fountain in the Forest, as I was by then well underway with the next volume of the trilogy. More of which anon.
Online events have been a revelation, too; making a huge, positive impact in terms of access for disabled artists, writers and audiences, as well as opening up events across geographical – and economic – boundaries. I hope those opportunities can be maintained and built upon, and I’m a wholehearted supporter of the #keepfestivalshybrid campaign.
But actual live readings in front of an audience are a central part of my work as a writer, and I’ve really missed live gigs. So it was brilliant to do Brixton Book Jam (pictured) last month; amazing to be performing in front of a live audience once again.
Over the past couple of years, while there have occasionally been things to tweet, or to post here or on Instagram, there’s not felt quite the critical mass of outputs to put together in a newsletter – until now.
Lockdown also brought the opportunity to do some modest but essential forward-planning work supported by Arts Council England through the Arts Council Emergency Response Fund: for individuals. I’m truly grateful. That small grant really was a godsend, and it enabled me to devote a little time to bringing my scriptwriting and script consultancy work together in one place, and to do similar for the writing workshops that I offer.
It also allowed me to research a better way of doing my newsletter: to make the service available to more people, to offer more to subscribers, and to find a way around some of the glitches that had grown with the previous format, so that when things started up again, the newsletter could too.
And with several exciting publications and events in the pipeline once again, now seems a good time to do just that, and pick up where we left off.
So here’s the announcement: If you don’t already subscribe to my occasional newsletter for book news and invites to events, but would like to, it’s easy! (And you can unsubscribe at any time.)Here’s the ALL NEW sign-up page…
Thank you to Hiromi for sending through this photo of The Fountain in the Forest beneath a canopy of Tokyo cherry blossom. I love it.
I’m always delighted when friends old and new send a photo of a book of mine that they’re reading, or have spotted in a shop or a library. Thank you so much! It’s an unexpected benefit of social media, and it gives me great pleasure to share them on.
Writing is a solitary activity, and your photos are always a pleasure to receive. These pictures remind me of the network of readers and bookshops; of books passing from hand to hand, and of holding a book in your hands to read. A reminder that books and stories are a real connection, but one that is created by the reader just as much as the writer. And that once they are out in the world, your books and stories have a life of their own, and you never know who will pick them up next.
💚#justice4grenfell 💚— 👏👏👏👏 and thank you to whoever wrote this, spotted on a section of temporary cordon near Hammersmith Bridge yesterday.
This has reminded me of something that Dot once said, a useful lesson: ‘You have to keep on saying it.’
I met Dot Donsworth – a campaigner for the preservation of the many beautiful commons around Bournemouth and Poole – while working in the area on ashort story commission for the excellent former digital arts agency SCAN.
Dot was also a dog walker, particular on Turbary Common. She hadn’t set out to be an activist, just she said that every few years someone, some chancer, would try and slip something through planning, to build on some corner of these commons. And — she told me — you had to keep on saying No, it’s a common. You can’t build there. You can’t let that through.
You had to keep on saying it. She’d been doing this since the 1970s.
You had to keep on saying it, in other words, because there were always plenty of people, including in positions of power, hoping you’d forget.
Piece of Paper Press & tonywhite.london 
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