RofC Newsletter 12.362
This year's prize, Incline Books, Tippermuir Books, Moist, and Weatherglass
It’s three weeks before submission closes on this year’s prize, after which the judges will read until Christmas. The Longlist will be announced in January, shortlist in February, winner in March.
I think we’ve had more brand new presses submit by this point than any year since our first year, which is good thing. Some presses are no longer eligible, which is also good thing, because they have outgrown us, which is at least one measure of success. I have noticed on social media a couple of presses have ceased trading, which is obviously a bad thing. If you haven’t read my substack pieces on the economies of publishing, please do - it’s a wonder any small press survives.
I appreciate in these grim times rather than sign up to new subscriptions, we’re more likely to scroll through our bank statements to find ones to cancel . But if you are in the mood to give more support to small presses - a subscription is the way to do it. And the Weatherglass one, at this moment, is real value for money. OK, I have a vested interest in Weatherglass - I’m a co-founder. But because of a conflict of interest with the prize (I founded it) we can’t enter, so that small part of potential income is denied us. I have no doubt at all that David Robert’s The Way the Day Breaks would make the longlist (at least) this year.
Anyway, if you’re a small press and you haven’t yet submitted, I will nudge you by email and via social media and look forward to your entries.
Incline Press
These people are new to me, but doing wonderfully esoteric work. I will leave you to have a look and supply links for further investigation.
Graham is working hard on printing the next book Memento Mori : Memento Vivere. He finished the writing and currently has to print the last four pages and some tip-ins before completing the folding and collation for binding. The standard copies will be bound by Roger Grech at his canal-side bindery in Shipley, while printing of the specials and their binding will be done in house. Many thanks to all of you who have ordered in advance; your second package of additional ephemera will be sent as soon as the standard books go off to Roger, to thank you for your support.
If you would like to buy a copy, it is still available in our shop.
Meanwhile, we are still clearing up and have found a small handful of copies of each of these six different chapbooks and pamphlets during our latest sweep. These have been added to the online shop today.
You can find links to them on the photos and its first come, first served!
Tippermuir Books
Iain Maloney, author of the critically-acclaimed The Only Gaijin in the Village, a memoir about his life in rural Japan, has released his new book, The Japan Lights: On the Trail of the Scot Who Lit Up Japan’s Coast (TJL for short). The book is part history, part travel writing (as well as being informative and funny) and is centred around the author’s attempts to visit all the lighthouses in Japan built under the guidance/design of Richard Henry Brunton, an engineer from Kincardineshire.
The Japan Lights is now available for review - review copies can be requested by emailing mail@tippermuirbooks.co.uk. Iain is also available for interviews and appearances (online except for August when he is on tour in Scotland).
In 2017, holed up in a hotel room, feverish, despondent and aimless, Iain Maloney chances upon an article about Richard Henry Brunton, a Victorian civil engineer unknown in his Scottish homeland but considered ‘The Father of Japanese Lighthouses’ in Japan. With more than twenty of his lighthouses still in use today, Maloney sets out with newfound purpose to visit them all.
Part travel memoir, part history, The Japan Lights visits isolated regions of rural Japan, discovering compelling stories from its past. Maloney witnesses the lingering trauma of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, and comes to a new understanding of the precariousness of life on a planet that is 71 per cent water. On the way he explores the paradox of Brunton, a flawed human being whose work saved hundreds of thousands of lives and made the seas around Japan safer for all.
‘Iain Maloney sheds new light on the topic, with a mix of historical fact and personal touches...an entertaining, enjoyable and informative read.’ - Chris Glenn, Radio DJ, TV presenter and author.
‘In a kind of time-travel memoir, Iain Maloney shines a light on Brunton, illuminating both his good deeds, and his shortcomings with equal care and tenderness. Maloney’s humour and compassion are the real star of the show.’ - Nick Bradley, Author of The Cat and The City
The Only Gaijin in the Village is a ‘A charmer...the crisp, evocative prose is liberally splashed with Maloney’s dry blend of humour...This book is a wealth of information and the reader learns a huge amount about rural Japan. It is charming, as is its narrator, and always amusing. The crisp and evocative prose is liberally splashed with Iain’s dry blend of humour’. - Dundee Courier
Moist
INNOMINATE is an arts administration murder-mystery from curator, critic, and debut novelist Naomi Pearce.
“Naomi Pearce pinches, peers and pulls at the ragged edges of gentrified corpora. Through a hybrid form of feminist forensic and experimental mystery writing, she guides us to a world behind, a world that has been forgotten.”- Maria Fusco
“A classic of local archaeology, lifting the particulars of place and persons into the dimension of a driven and crafted poetic. A building that is both grounded and fictive releases its psychobiography.” – Iain Sinclair
“Innominate is both a novel and a collaborative act of memory, desire and political hope: ghost architecture, re-fleshed.” – Bhanu Kapil
“Such a smart, self-assured debut ... A beautiful take on London's underground art scene of the 1970s, and how it haunts the gentrifiers of the 21st century. Naomi Pearce is a writer to watch.” – Juliet Jacques
Tower Street, East London, 1975: a crumbling block of artists’ studios shaped by the myth of male genius but maintained by Connie, a female caretaker struggling to find her creative voice. Cut to 2017, and this same building is now luxury apartments, the new home of young couple Jane and Tam. Yet their fresh start is jeopardized when a chance discovery brings past secrets to light.
Drawing on interviews with artists, photographers and administrators, as well as autobiographical elements, Innominate is a mystery story about privilege and power, in which buildings (and bodies) alternately nurture, trap, and entangle their inhabitants. Perhaps it is only by dissecting the architecture of a place that we can truly understand what happened there?
Naomi Pearce is a writer and curator. Recent exhibitions include Almost Conceptual, Matt’s Gallery and 56 Artillery Lane, Raven Row, London (co-curated with Amy Budd). Her writing has been published by Art Monthly, Happy Hypocrite, Kunstverein Munich, Punctum Books and The White Review, among others. From 2018-2022 she was a member of the Rita Keegan Archive Project, a social history and curatorial collective, whose recent activity includes an exhibition at South London Gallery and the publication Mirror Reflecting Darkly with MIT Press. Innominate is her first novel.
It also has a very beautiful, very instagramable cover, courtesy of the estate of Helen Chadwick.
What’s not to like?
Find out more at MOIST
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And finally, it is publication week for Weatherglass Books 8th title, the gloriously dark, angry, funny, at times disturbing How to be a French Girl by Rose Cleary.
See you soon, Neil