Now out!

After months of hard labour, copies of my letterpress & handmade short story chapbook 'A Stranger Came' are now officially available! They're priced at £3.90 post paid to UK addresses - contact me for prices if you live outside of the UK. I'll accept payment by paypal, cheque, or the time-honoured method of sticking coins to a bit of card and sending them through the post and hoping for the best. Contact me at the email address in my profile, or leave a comment below, if you want one.

Let's get organised

I keep promising myself I'll stop using the phrase, "Sorry I've been so rubbish at staying in touch lately. Things have been really busy at my end." I came out of my mother's womb saying it, and despite numerous resolutions to stop getting involved in things, I somehow always manage to fill every moment of spare time with doings. Whether it's organising, writing, going to the library, having meetings, or typesetting and printing, there's always something to do. It'll be on my gravestone: "Here lays Sarah Bradley. She wished there could have been more hours in the day."

Comma Press is seeking submissions to a structurally-based anthology called 'The Reveal'. Entries ought to be between 2000 & 8000 words in length, and entry is free if you've bought one of their previous anthologies. Entering is a bit complicated - you have to email your entry to two email addresses as well as sending a hard copy through the post - so look carefully at the guidelines.

Mslexia magazine, the magazine for women's writers, is running an unpublished novel competition for the first time ever! Entries can be of any genre, and the prize is a generous one - £5,000. To enter, send them the first 5,000 words of your novel; the entry fee is £25.

There's an exciting arts in the public realm festival in Chapeltown, Leeds, next week. Under the Paving Stones, the Beach aims to encourage interaction with creativity, and to offer different opportunities for the public to interact with different kinds of art away from traditional gallery spaces. There are all kinds of events from a pop-up art pub, to an interactive mobile phone experience that gets participants involved in the running of the "Independent People's Republic of Chapeltown".

As for me, I'm going to get my head down and get some work done....

Currently reading

The Crystal World JG Ballard
Sunset Park Paul Auster

Fictions of Every Kind now has its own website!

Fictions has grown up. It's gone through a teenage phase of shouting "I hate you!" and "I didn't ASK to be born!", slamming the doors off all of the hinges and inviting it's mates around to run up and down the stairs like a herd of baby elephants, and now it's moving out.

Please go and visit Fictions of Every Kind in its new internet bungalow to see its baby photos, and to find out what it'll get up to next.

Fictions of Every Kind: Procrastination

Photo by Nick of The Print Project

Fictions of Every Kind: Procrastination is our next event. It will take place on July 5th at The Leeds 'Secret' Library and will feature screenings of specially curated films around the theme of 'procrastination'. Award-winning shorts from Canada, the US, the UK and Ireland will be shown, and boxed wine will be provided. Entry will be free, although donations towards the cost of the boxed wine will be welcomed. There will be time and opportunity for writers to share their work. It'll start at 19.30 and will end around 21.30.
The 'Secret' Library - also known as 'The Leeds Library' (for that is its real name) is the city's oldest independent subscription library. If you live in Leeds, you have probably walked past it hundreds of times without even noticing its there. The doorway to it is snuggled between Britannia Bank and Paperchase on Commercial Street, Leeds, opposite LUSH. It was opened in the 1760s and boasted Joseph Priestley as one early member. Annual membership costs £25 for young 'uns between the ages of 18-25, or £75 if you are starting to get wrinkly, like me. However, you do not have to be a member to attend the 'procrastination' event, as one of us will be able to sign you in.

There are lots of things to love about this library. It has a beautiful tiled entrance hall and stairway, and old-fashioned library ladders, and is filled literally floor to ceiling with really, really old books. The collection is idiosyncratic and reflects the interests of its members. Any member can request for new books to be added to the collection; accordingly, it has a large collection on the occult, following the interests of a member who was evidently a casual Satanist, and rich sections on topography and American classic literature.

Behind the original library is an extension to the original building, which was completed in 1900. They call this 'the new room'. This is where you'll find all the books on travel, topography, and the occult. Every week, on a Thursday afternoon, specialist book preservers in white lab coats come to fix the old books. It is thanks to their work that the library is able to continue to hold a collection of marvellous old tomes.

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to seeing your lovely faces on July 5th!

A Stranger Came: Out Shortly!

A close up of those bound edges

'Tis nearly finished! After months of labour, A Stranger Came is now (almost) completely bound, cut and ready to go. It will be out later on this week. Two things remain to be done: the pages trimmed, and for each copy to be numbered. I am sure I won't get writer's cramp doing the second one.

Let's have a look at those different-coloured covers in full.



L-R: White with ltd edition silver binding; cream; brown; pale yellow




Pale yellow; cream; brown; white with ltd edition silver binding

Currently reading

Trust me, I'm a junior doctor Max Pemberton
The Crystal World JG Ballard

What a bind!

These are the pages of my short story 'zine A Stranger Came. Those of you who've been following my blog regularly will know that I've been typesetting and letterpress printing this story for the past few months. It's been a bit of a painstaking endeavour! The text is set in Morris Gold 8pt type, and because I didn't have enough of it to set a full page at a time, I instead spent many weeks typesetting two paragraphs at once, printing those, breaking up the type, sorting it, and then setting the next two paragraphs....

The last of the printing itself was finished about a month ago. (Special thanks at this point must go to Nick at The Print Project for teaching me how to typeset and print, and for letting me come over every week to print more bits of it.)

This week, the pages will at last get bound together. The rather marvellous Alice Rix is going to come around to lend a hand, and to help me work out how to bind it. Hopefully, by the end of this week, 86 copies of A Stranger Came should be bound and cut and ready for sale.

Here are the things you need for binding:


Clockwise from top: Craft knife costing £2.69 or less; hole punching device; hammer; embroidery thread.

More to follow.

Currently reading

Burma Boy Biyi Bandele
Not on the Label Felicity Lawrence

Fictions of Every Kind: Missing - two days after

Gareth Durasow reading at Fictions of Every Kind: Missing

What a marvellous night we all had on Tuesday at the Library. My thanks go out to everyone who came out, making it such a success!

There were plenty of exciting newcomers to the open mic, and some brilliant contributions from our regulars. Many of the pieces were touching and thought-provoking. Approaches to the month's theme were diverse. The creativity in the air was palpable....



Catherine reads a piece on 'going missing' during the Open Mic

Our guest speakers were Gareth Durasow (pictured, above) and Nasser Hussain. We had been expecting Phil Kirby, but he was unable to make it at the very last minute. Gareth read from a set of poems, numbered 1 - 12, and the audience chose (by heckling) the order in which he should read them. It was funny and biting and inspirational, and we were really glad to have him. Nasser, an excellent addition to the bill, is a Canadian-born hip-hop influenced poet. His work riffed off and referenced Stevie Wonder and Run DMC, and his poems were read with fascinating rhythm. If you ever get the chance to see him perform, I really recommend that you go.



The night was closed by the marvellous 7 hertz, whose music perhaps can best be described as "improvised sound-paintings". Though it was late, and much beer had been drunk, the audience listened in a raptured silence, drawn in by the intertwining melodies and counterpoints.



Thanks again to everyone who came out ... hope to see you at the next one!