RofC Newsletter - May 24
News from Ortac Press, previous RofC winner at Foyles, Weatherglass Books and some photos of RofC winner event, also at Foyles
2024 Prize
Thank you everyone who supports the prize. We awarded another £10,000 to small presses this year, bring the total in 8 years to £112,000.
If you are a paid Substack subscriber, we’ll be emailing you soon about your free book. In the meantime, have a look at the longlist here to choose.
We’ll be kickstarting the 2025 prize in a month’s time.
And below the newsletter items are a few photos from the winner event.
Ortac Press
Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum: Conversations with Other Animals by Luke Thompson
Published 5th September 2024
Luke Thompson is a unique and compelling guide through conversations, real and imagined, with other beings. Spanning the ancient and modern, the scientific and the strange, Thompson's journey takes him from the stories of King Solomon and Doctor Dolittle to medieval dragon-slayers and extraterrestrial aliens, via Harvard laboratories, pet psychics, and the discipline of anthrozoology.
Always eccentric and always fascinating, Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum sees Thompson navigate these peculiar landscapes with many questions on his mind: What exactly do we want from conversations with our fellow animals? What portrait of the world do we paint when we envisage these communications? And how far are we willing to go to realise this dream?
‘Thompson’s book is playful, provocative, at times surreal, at other times heartbreaking.' Melanie Challenger, author of How to be Animal
'A wry, intimate magpie of a narrator gathering eclectic histories, Thompson is a beguiling guide in a world enriched with the possibility of communicating with other species.' Jen Hadfield, winner of the T.S Eliot Prize
Also, from Ortac Press, a new book from an great supporter of the prize and all-round sound fella.
Disappear Here: Bret Easton Ellis's America by Stu Hennigan
Published Late 2025
Ortac Press are very excited to be publishing a new book from Stu Hennigan, author of Ghost SIgns (shortlisted for Political Book of the Year 2022 and Books are my Bag Readers Awards 2022). As Ellis turns 60, Less Than Zero turns 40 and the success of The Shards turns attention back on to his books, Disappear Here will make the case for Ellis's bibliography as a cultural archive of America over the last 40 years, and will examine America's social and cultural history over this period through the lens of Ellis's work.
Disappear Here promises to be a fascinating look at American society through the eyes of one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, by one of the most incisive cultural and political writers of the moment. As a taster for the book, Stu has recently published a piece on 3AM magazine about Ellis.
Jean-Baptiste del Amo. Winner of the 2020 RofC Prize is at Foyles.
I think Animalia is one of the outstanding novels of the 21st Century. But don’t trust me, here is what Ian Sanson says. A man I trust.
In Weatherglass Books news
We’ve sold North American Rights of our July novel, the heartbreaking The Pages of the Sea to our friends Biblioasis. This is the second rights sale to Biblioasis this year. First was Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg, translated by Wendy H Gabrielsen.
As promised.
