Jimmy Cauty's Aftermath Dislocation Principle: Submissions sought

This summer, Jimmy Cauty's artwork the Aftermath Dislocation Principle will be taking a RIOT! tour around the country. It will be arriving in Leeds from the 14th-21st July.

We are gathering riot stories, poetry, and narratives to publish in a newspaper / fanzine to appear as a companion piece during its time here. The newspaper will be given away free, and all authors will retain copyright to their work.

We are gathering stories and poems in response to the theme of 'riot'. Accepted pieces will be published in an accompanying newspaper which will be available, for free, when the Aftermath Dislocation Principle lands in Leeds.

Perhaps you were caught up in a riot? Perhaps you were a bystander, or your business or family were affected? Perhaps you were (or are) part of a radical community group involved in self-organising, in doing things differently, or in doing something riotously amazing. Whatever it is, we want to hear from you. We can also print black & white images, so if you want to send a photograph or image that goes with your story, please send us that, as well.

If your story is a true one, please include a year or date which tells us when your story took place.

We are also accepting creative responses - stories or poems - on related themes, too. Stories or poetry which reflect off themes of riot, disruption, destruction, uprising, community work, and radical approaches, are all welcome. A ‘riot’ doesn’t always have to be destructive: we’re also talking about riots of the mind. Radical approaches can be creative and positive - they don’t always have to be about smashing things up. We are open to receiving anything that you think matches the theme.

Please send your submissions in .doc format (2000 words or less for prose please, 30 lines or less for poetry)

When submitting your story / piece to our project, please also give us a short description of what your piece is in the 'further information' box as you submit. This will help us to keep track of things!
Submit using our Submittable portal, here

Currently reading

Liam Brown Real Monsters

Short Story writing workshop

Hi! Sorry for the total radio silence. The reason for my quietness (on here at least, not on Twitter) is because I've been ferreting away on some short stories. I've been really busy and now I nearly have enough for a full collection.

Anyway, I'm running a Short story writing workshop as part of the Big Bookend Festival, in Leeds. The workshop is entitled "Ideas are everywhere!" and it's about finding ideas for short stories everywhere you look. It's on Saturday 6th June at 1.00 and tickets are £3. You can book through the Big Bookend website. 

More soon. 

Currently reading

The Keep Jennifer Egan 

Ubik Philip K Dick

Fictions of Every Kind: Home

The next Fictions of Every Kind will be on Tuesday March 25th, themed: Home. Invited speakers will be Nasser Hussain and Zodwa Nyoni. The event will take place at Wharf Chambers* in Leeds, starting at 19:30. Entry, as ever, will be a recession-friendly £3.

Zodwa Nyoni is a Zimbabwean-born poet & playwright. She was named as one of Leeds' 20 best writers under 40 last year, and was apprentice poet in residence at last years' Ilkley Literature Festival. Nasser Hussain is a poet and performer who lectures in creative writing at York University.

Music will come from David Broad. As ever, there will be a writers' open mic - please keep your contributions at 5 minutes or under; we'll be enforcing this time limit, so please practise reading your work out beforehand to check it fits! Short stories, flash fiction, true stories and excerpts from larger works are all welcome.

Nasser's very hard to google. Here he is reading a poem about that very fact:



And here's Zodwa performing with Vanessa Rani Chutturgoon at last years' Ilkley Literature Festival:



* Please note: Wharf Chambers is a members club & you must be a member to attend an event here. Joining costs £1 and takes a minimum of 48 hours to take effect. For more info visit www.wharfchambers.org

Fictions of Every Kind

Fictions of Every Kind is a quarterly DIY writers' night based in Leeds, UK. It has been running for 2 years now and is run by a small group of writers, including myself. Our aim is to provide support and encouragement to anyone involved in the lonely act of writing. You can find out more about our planned events by following us on twitter (@fictionsoek), on facebook, or going to our website.

It has recently come to my attention that the Fictions Of Every Kind website doesn't show up in web results, and I'm not really sure why this is. I spent a bit of time trying to find out, but it turns out that when you type "Why doesn't my website show up in Google" into Google, the answers you get back are all a load of two-year old gobbledegook. I couldn't make any sense of any of them.

As a shortcut, knowing that this blog does show up in search engines (oh, sweet mysteries of the internet), I've decided to put a link to the Fictions of Every Kind website here. You can add it to your RSS feed or blogger feed or whatever it is you young people do to stay abreast of things these days. Our next event, themed 'Apocalypse', is on December 11th at Wharf Chambers with the singularly marvellous Anneliese Mackintosh. There will be games, prizes, the writers' open mic (true stories, short and flash fiction and novel excerpts all welcome; please keep your contributions at 7 minutes or under), a DJ, and a short film screening. Entry will continue to be a recession-friendly £3.

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!

Fictions of Every Kind

I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that last Tuesday's Fictions of Every Kind was an unqualified runaway success. There were superb readings from Matt Bellwood, Nasser Hussein, "Dr" Sam Francis, and Mason Henry Summers. Every single reading was amazing, and all of these performers had the audience hanging off their every carefully-chosen word.

There was a set of beautiful music from the very wonderful Invisible Cities, and in addition the standard in the open mic section of the night was especially high. Who knew there were so many talented writers hiding out in Leeds?!

The next Fictions of Every Kind is planned for the 11th January 2011, with a theme of 'Hungover and Underwhelmed'. It takes place at The Library Pub in Leeds, from 7.30 - 10.30 pm, with an entry fee of £3; and if I have anything to do with it, it'll be a devil of a lot of fun.

Watch this space to find out who the guest speakers and musical act are....

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Hell is other people's music choices...

Lately, mainly because it is colder inside my house than it is outdoors (how can this be?), I've been doing a lot of writing in the local coffee shops. There are many advantages to working in a coffee shop, chief amongst which is that it is warm there, and there is no need to wear fingerless gloves while you type. There are fewer distractions in a coffee shop; your average writer is less likely to procrastinate by suddenly noticing that the skirting boards need ironing, or that there's a mucky teaspoon in the sink that needs washing up right away. In my nearest coffee shops, I can't even get an internet connection. Add to this the frequent availability of coffee and cake, and you have a recipe for excellent writer productivity. In the last week alone, I have finished six novels, eight short stories, and an hundred-line ballad written in iambic pentameter, just by dint of sitting in the nearest Costa. (Only joking.... I don't write poetry).

But srsly though coffee shops of West Yorkshire, what is UP with your music choice? A few days ago, I was rendered rampantly KILLY and ENRAGED by the abuse to which my ears were subject. Coffee shops of the world seemed to have turned to filling their stereos with CDs of pastel coloured, twinkly, no-cunt, irritatingly twee music, designed to offend nobody. There must be a special shop that sells this stuff; I imagine that only coffee shops buy it - for the love of God, I hope that nobody willingly listens to this stuff at home.

This kind of music is meant to promote a self-consciously cool, laid-back atmosphere within the environs. Recently, I've heard versions of 'Tainted Love' sung by a woman with a child's voice backed with what sounded like a music-box, 'Sweet Child O' Mine' gently tickled to death with a xylophone and an accordion, and a version of 'When Doves Cry' played in a jaunty rhythm on a Spanish guitar. I imagine the aim is to reassure your average coffee-shop customer with music with which he or she is familiar, presented in a way that promotes a kind of slow death by passivity: a sort of lift music for the post-modern ironist of the 21st Century, if you will. It's irritating and its twee, and every time I hear one of these dreadful, knowing cover versions, I am filled with an almost uncontrollable urge to punch a kitten to death. And I really like kittens.

Please, coffee shops of the local West Yorkshire area: I AM TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL AND THIS CAR ADVERT MUSIC IS NOT HELPING.

Fictions of Every Kind

November: season of fireworks, dark nights, writing in dark garret rooms wearing fingerless gloves, and of large swathes of people attempting to write a novel in a month. Interesting fact: writing Inception took Christopher Nolan 10 years, while Stephanie Meyer wrote Twilight in a matter of 2 months. You can make of that what you will, because I am in no way casting aspersions about the sustained hard work and detailed attention that ought to go into writing a worthwhile novel.

November also brings us the first ever Fictions Of Every Kind night. The inaugural FOEK aims to celebrate national short story week, and it will do it with a wide range of interesting performers - with readings from folk story-teller Matt Bellwood, to hip-hop poetry with Nasser Hussein; cyber-punk and speculative work from Sam Francis, cutting-edge dark science-fiction from Mason Henry Summers, and fiction from me too. Readers, I haven't read aloud to an assembled audience since that unfortunate incident at primary school, and I don't mind telling you I'm a bit scared.

In addition, there's music from the very wonderful Invisible Cities, and an open mic story-telling session at the beginning of the night.

"Where is all this happening?" I hear you cry. "I'm champing at the bit to go to there!"

Well first of all hold your horses, because its not until the 23rd of November. Its at The Library Pub in Leeds, it starts at 7pm, and its £3 in (all this information is on the flier above if you squint your eyes hard enough.)

Hopefully these kinds of shenanigans will become a regular event, but until then you'll just have to content yourself with this one, dear readers. Hope to see you there.