January's Newsletter
It's very cold. Please check out Book Clubs in Schools, news from Scotland Street Press and Weatherglass Books, and information about Inpress Day of Publishing next week!
A note for your diary
We will be announcing the Long List for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses on February 5th at 10am on Substack, followed by X and Instagram. This will be our 8th year, and having done the maths we’ll have awarded £110,000 to small presses after this year. We’ve raised this money from lots of different sources, but most of it comes from our book club, so if you’re not a member, please do consider it. The books for this year can be seen here. You can also choose from previous Book of the Month choices, 4 titles from last year’s Long List and when it lands, this year’s Long List.
We want to lead with this great project. I know that without books in school and teachers talking about books to me, my life would have been very different.
Book Clubs in School
Book Clubs in Schools is a charity that promotes reading for pleasure in schools by providing all the resources for schools to run book clubs. Our model involves older students leading the book clubs for younger students. We passionately believe that reading and discussing can be a powerful driver of social change and open opportunities for young people. Watch our award-winning film to find out more about us.
So far, 17,000 young people have taken part in our book clubs, and we’re celebrating our 10th birthday this year. Follow us on our socials (X, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn) to join in the celebrations.
Please follow, and support in any way you can.
Scotland Street Press
1. In a very exciting turn of events, Petra Reid and Jim Dingley have received an honourable mention from the Modern Language Association of America for their “adventurous” translation of Alhierd Bacharevič’s Alindarka’s Children, long-listed for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (2021). The judges wrote:
“Translated from a text written in at least three languages—Belarusian, Russian, and various mixtures of the two—Alindarka’s Children is a dark satirical fantasy that required an equally heterogeneous English version. Petra Reid and Jim Dingley devised a dissonant concoction of English and Scottish that converses beautifully with the estrangements and disturbances of the original. The translation accepts the high stakes of language in Belarus, where, as the introduction notes, “language has long been under insidious attack.” The result is a captivating story of childhood and forests, of inept fathers and sibling love, of language as dream and as prison. The theme of Alhierd Bacharevič’s novel is in the manner of the telling—which makes the admirable and adventurous translation all the more effective.”
Want to know what all the fuss is about? Head to the Scotland Street Press website.
2. Coming out in the US on 13th February is Jean Findlay’s The Queen’s Lender, described by Historical Writers Association as ‘royal court intrigue at its finest’, and by Kirkus Reviews as a ‘seamless narrative’. Read the full review here.
Bag your very own copy via the Scotland Street Press website.
Weatherglass Books
The brilliant Canadian Independent Press Biblioasis has just acquired the North American rights for Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg, translated by Wendy H. Gabrielsen.
Here’s what John Self said about it on his Fiction in Translation round-up for the Guardian.
“This tense novel of loneliness and dissatisfaction made me laugh a lot – to begin with. A double award-winner in Norway, it tells the story of 53-year-old Karin and her daughter, Helene. Helene’s husband is having an affair with a woman whose “body is smooth and hard like technology”. “Maybe they’re just good friends. What did the messages actually say?” asks Karin. “That he’d like to come inside her,” replies Helene. Karin has been looking for happiness in the same place, with men. Her dates are always comically mismatched, and then not so comically – one man yanks her earrings out of her ears. Stoltenberg’s elegant prose makes each scene – a trip to London, a memory of a past boyfriend – so engaging that it gives plot a bad name. By the end, the atmosphere has shifted with such subtlety that the sentence “the rooms are exactly how she left them” can seem almost too sad to bear.”
Inpress Festival of Publishing
Location: Conway Hall, London
Time/Date: 24th January 2024 from 9AM to 4PM
Tickets and programme available here: Inpress Festival of Publishing 2024 Ticket – Inpress Books
Designed as a networking and sharing of ideas event, the Inpress Festival of Publishing is a day of presentations and panel events featuring an eclectic mix of experts ready to share their experiences and their discoveries. It is a chance to inspire and be inspired, to hone bookish ideas and meet new collaborators in a supportive and creative environment.
This year’s programme will cover sustainability, inclusivity, collaborative partnerships, TikTok and working with influencers. It will feature representatives from several Inpress publishers alongside figures from the wider industry, including Illumicrate founder Daphne Tonge, BookSource MD Davinder Bedi, The Poetry Pharmacy founder Deborah Alma and many more.
About Inpress
In case you’re unfamiliar with our work, Inpress is the UK’s specialist sales and marketing agency for independent publishers. We work with over 60 innovative, literary small presses across the UK and Ireland (including several recognised by the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize, The Guardian, The New Yorker and more) to offer a one-stop-shop for booksellers and bookworms who want something a little bit different.Republic of Consciousness is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.