n quentin woolf

literary events

RECITALS / READINGS

If you are interested in hearing about one-off or regular readings of short stories or poetry, book signings, written word performances and other literary events, please mail contact@nquentinwoolf.co.uk , telling me so; I’ll try to keep you updated.

LITERARY EVENTS

I co-ordinate an occasional calendar of readings, book launches, signings (many free) etc in Shoreditch, East London. A regularly updated diary of events is available  ; if you are interested in attending, reading from, or launching, a book, or would like to receive the email bulletin of new events, please email contact@nquentinwoolf.co.uk saying so.

quotation

” I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. ”  - Maya Angelou

back story

“The provocative words of N Quentin Woolf ring out” – Michelle Harris (reviewer, Landing)

I try to keep track of what’s going on… here’s the (usually slightly out-of-date) story-so-far:

JANUARY 2010

• Founded a new group of writers on the Thames’ South Bank.
• Agreed a longer format for The Arts Show

DECEMBER 2009

• Hosting a day-long workshop on contact improvisation in dance and words
• Launched ‘The Bookshop In Brick Lane’ anthology

NOVEMBER 2oo9

• Hosted live debate between Pen Pusher and Smoke magazines
• Edited two short fiction anthologies
• Have become regular contributor to Bespoke Online
• First translated piece accepted for publication (in both English and French)

OCTOBER 2oo9

• Preparing contact improv/ contact prose workshop
• Published non-fiction book on creative writing

SEPTEMBER 2009

• Have accepted offer to become a regular writer for The Londonist (www.londonist.com); weekly arts feature should start to appear before end of month.
• Writing on occasional basis for the Hackney Citizen (www.hackneycitizen.co.uk)
• A new term of creative writing classes advertised and quickly over-subscribed.

AUGUST 2oo9

• Launched The Arts Show on Xstream East Radio (www.xstreameast.co.uk), an arts magazine show with an East London focus
• Offers made, and gratefully accepted, on short stories by literary magazines including Carillon, The Interpreter’s House, Bespoke, The Reader and Stingray.

JULY 2oo9

• The Brick Lane creative workshops enter their seventh and eighth series simultaneously; we’re enjoying a new collaboration with 93 Feet East in Brick Lane.
• Approaching the final phrase of compiling an anthology of work from the long-established critique group which meets each week in Brick Lane.
• Lionel Shriver, Beryl Bainbridge and Sarah Waters have all confirmed they’ll be appearing at events.

JUNE 2oo9

• Entering the final phrase of compiling an anthology of work from the long-established critique group which meets each week in Brick Lane.
• This month saw the highest ever turnouts at the Brick Lane Book Group and both critique groups.

MAY 2oo9

• Working with Polly Rogers on a non-fiction creative writing book.

APRIL 2oo9

• Churning out short stories.  Big Man, In The Bucket and Man Walks Into A Bar have all gone down well in critique groups.
• Invited to Wilton’s Music Hall to write critique
• Happy to be involved with launch of Bespoke magazine, by Ade Bankole

MARCH 2oo9

• Another new term of creative classes begins, the students stronger than ever
• Collaborating with new magazines UK-wide to set up a showcase in London later this year

FEBRUARY 2oo9

• Structuring a new, international collaboration between writers in Europe and North America.
• Two new performance prose events booked

JANUARY 2009

• Some of my poetry used in a performance at the Robin Howard Theatre, London.

DECEMBER 2008

• Debut of Landing, at the Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone, as part of Cloud Dance: Trilogy.
• Live prose event in honour of Dan Nicolai at Brick Lounge, E1, with readings from poets and prose writers from the USA, UK, Italy and Ireland.
• Groundwork completed for new novel (working title: Complicity).

((picture on its merry way))

Above: Landing at the Cockpit Theatre

(performer: Jordi Calpe Serrats)

NOVEMBER 2008

• Audio recording of a piece of my poetry with Warren Davis

OCTOBER 2008

• First meetings with composer Jack Hurd for collaboration on Landing, a short piece about pioneers, for performance at Evolution / Resolutions in January.

SEPTEMBER 2008

• The Work In Progress critique group has been so popular I’ve started a second group, meeting Thursdays.  Also started a publication workshop for newer writers looking to see their work in print.
• Collaboration with dance company confirmed for stage production later this year.

AUGUST 2008

• New novel begun in earnest.  I’m using a new-to-me scene-building technique based around music; results promising so far.

JULY 2008

• Brick Lane Book Group re-established, with lots of keen readers attending

JUNE 2008

• Writing classes begun in Shoreditch
• Co-operation secured between Shoreditch literary festival (September 27th) and Eastside Books

MAY 2008

• Writing workshops in Wood Green begun on May 21st
• Preparations begun for piece of microtheatre, set in East London.
• Poetry Exchange in preparation for mid-July launch
• Preparations for series of performance readings for July

APRIL 2008

• Weekly writing workshops at Brick Lane launched.
• Oxford Literary Festval – introduced to Philip Pullman

MARCH 2008

• Collaboration confirmed with Tempered Body Dance Company for a series of language-based educational workshops in Canada later in the year.  I will also be writing for a performance piece to be staged in London and Toronto in 2009.
• Preparations to take Not Me Now to Ediburgh
• Some short non-fiction pieces written.

FEBRUARY 2008

• Two performances of the four-person piece Not Me Now performed as part of the Dance Collective showcase at Chisenhale Dance Space, Bethnal Green.
• Excavation of basement in Brick Lane begun, ready for workshops later in the year.

JANUARY 2008

• In Ontario, Canada, my fictive monologue Not Me Now, about a lucid, elderly Alzheimer’s Disease sufferer, was recorded by Laurie Lewis and scored by composer Jack Hurd.  It debuted as part of a collaboration for the Resolution! Festival with choreographer Maddy Wynne-Jones at The Place, King’s Cross.  Reviews were positive.  View it here.

DECEMBER 2007

• Exhibited several short pieces including Five to Birth and On The Folly Of Presumption at Fucking Cool Art, Deptford.

((picture on its merry way))

Above: Not Me Now at the Robin Howard Theatre

(performer: Amy Matthieson)

what i write and why

For years I wrote and wrote, and for years I didn’t think about why I was doing it. If you’d asked me, I’d have said the ‘why’ wasn’t important. (In hindsight, this was probably an avoidance tactic – I didn’t want to pick at scabs. I’d started writing as a kid during some pretty testing experiences; writing had been about inventing better places to be. I didn’t much care to revisit that stuff.) I wrote for years and didn’t try seriously to get published. A couple of agents were moderately interested; it didn’t go anywhere. Then, not long ago, and with nearly fifteen years’-worth of material on which to draw, I decided to give it a proper shot. Well, why not?

It occurred to me that I might be asked about my motivation for writing, so I figured I’d better get over my reluctance to think about it, and work out something to say. Here’s what I wrote, back in 2007.

I is the big achievement of free market economics. It’s very easy to buy into I. Individuality is, of course, a big seller, which is why it’s mass-produced: a mega-industry, with everyone owning a franchise on the retail park where the church once stood. With religious assiduity we cultivate minute differences and wait for word of our uniquity to fill the store – but the other shopkeepers are too busy dressing their own windows. We consider changing our price. Should we stick, or should we twist? Only the weak price low… and my I is valuable. I am worth it. We are experts in selling, but the mall’s cavernous silence seems not to feel so great, right? Some days it feels like we might be alone in here. For comfort, we snap up and shit out increasing numbers of people (some of them real) and wonder who we are. Everyone else knows, apparently. We are dead authors, being written by one another; unheard trees; our avatars live the lives of Riley while we commute in silence, we bleary little cyborgs, swapping airborne pathogens as our i-pods shuffle. The imperative to commodify has long turned on us; we doublethought doublethink into being, and now watch the world falling apart, wondering what we can buy to make it better. I am just yet more I, of course. I’m inside, looking out, my face pressed against the shop window. I don’t think I’m clever enough to write a revolution, so I write about the loneliness in our collective I and the prosaic horrors it must witness, my self bound up in books: page after page of that single, sightless letter.

My reasons for writing are manifold, intermeshed and in a constant state of adjustment. I write as self-harm, as love-making, to remember; I write because I am a thief, a hoarder, a glutton, a slut. I believe in the beauty of order and am hopelessly hooked, as a human, on pattern-recognition and symmetry: I’m a sucker for the printed page. I write because it beats being dead. I write because I’m more than one person, and always have been, just like everybody else. I write because I’m a liar. I write to get at the truth, all the while knowing there’s no such thing. The exhileration of the perfect phrase clutches at my heart like a first love, to a musical swell: that’s something to be taken very, very seriously – it is close to the core of life. I write for victory! I write owing to circumstances beyond my control. It is maybe due to some low-level survival instinct that my reaction to most stimuli is internalisation, aggregation, incubation, and finally representation on the page. I guess I’m writing for my life. I write everyday horror and ugly humour – pain is comedy with the lights turned down. I write the words in between the spaces, but it is the spaces that interest me most. Words are never the thing itself; it is between them, in the omissions, that one finds meaning. I write, ultimately, because there is an I at the controls, and he isn’t done with me yet.

As a first attempt to understand why I’d been doing what I’d been doing those last fifteen years, it seemed like a start. It’s rather overcooked, of course, and I like the first paragraph much better than the second, despite the way it wanders way off-topic. I posted it to my website and thought nothing more of it.

Anyway, recently, fired up by the basis of the piece you’ve just read, someone wrote accusing me of thinking myself superior to ‘mere mortals’. They thought I was saying that the ability to write is a God-given gift, and that I was delusional enough to think some ethereal power had bestowed it upon me.

Oh dear. Well, let’s try and clear that up. I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in some silly concept of the writer being superior by dint of writing (or anything else). You occasionally get great people who happen to be writers (or bus conductors, or travel agents, or nuns, or whatever), but I’m not one of them – I’m at least as fallible as the next man.

And I don’t think that the right to write belongs to some elite. I don’t believe in there being any such ‘right’. The sole criterion for being a writer, it seem to me, is whether or not you write. Just talking about writing doesn’t count, nor does writing one thing and then dining out on it forever. Even publication, which marks the start of the professional phase, doesn’t actually make one a writer as much as simply writing does. In my various activities – buzz, buzz – I meet a lot of people who are passionate and serious about their writing, but who aren’t necessarily published. I have myself been in that boat for a good while. It’s a period of great vulnerability, with no timetable and no end-by date. The first question, the one you dread being asked, is ‘are you published?’ Irrespective of anything else – how much you’ve written, whether it’s any good, and so on – this single question is the binary upon which many people will decide whether you are allowed to hold opinions on writing. I was speaking to a soldier recently; he said you can do a tour of duty, be shot at, witness atrocities, suffer all manner of illnesses, but in many people’s minds you’re not a proper soldier until you’ve killed someone. Different fields, but odd validation issues, both. It’s quite a relief to me to be on the safe side of that snare, now. It doesn’t change the way I think about writing, but apparently it legitimises me, somehow. If the concept of ‘the right to write’ exists anywhere, I’m afraid it is in the minds of people who still imagine, in this age of blogs and tweets and short story sharing websites, cheap print-on-demand services and a collapsing publishing industry, that the validity of a writer hinges on print publication – or is a gift from on high.

It’s a rich topic, but I’ll leave it there for now. I’ve got some writing to do.

what people have said about recent workshops

I have been consistently inspired and motivated by the creativity of the writers in the group. Having flitted between other writers groups, this is easily the best one I’ve been to – SHUAB

I really enjoy this group and the different characters and writing, and I think you are great at running it and are very simpatico! – FRANCES

Thank you for all the emails and for running the classes. They were fantastic and I loved all of the activities and meeting interesting people with wonderful ideas. – BRYONY

Have to say – both of these [short stories] have come as almost direct produce from my Tuesday Write Club sessions. It’s started to give me enough of a buzz to want to get home and just write my socks off, which was something I’d lost since April. Ta! – TIM

You’re doing a smashing job, love the book choice at Eastside, keep it up. You’re a natural faciliatator in the groups as patience is most definitely a virtue … – DAVID

I value your insights, expertise and kindness enormously. – AMANDA

Thank you, and all those present, for the helpful comments, criticisms and encouraging responses last night. You obviously have a gift for leading writing groups which I admire.  – MARYBEL

It’s a brilliant group Nikk, and rapidly becoming one of my favourite nights out – SARAH

Thanks, I really loved the classes & hope to join in again next term/time – JO L

Nikk’s words are amazing: powerful and primitve – they’re very raw and have an understated power – sort of taking seed in me – JACK

Just wanted to say thank you for all of the competitions – it’s very useful to have an up to date compilation of them – MEL

Thanks again for a great writing course. :) I cannot believe how quickly the weeks have passed. – SHAUNA

This has been really important for me – DAN

last nights story/poety evening was great – really enjoyed it. Actually so much so that I found myself sitting at my desk today writing something that was sort of inspired by it. Thanks for getting this writing group together in such a constructive, supportive yet relaxed way – JANICE

I loved the workshop – MERIBETH

The first workshop was great.  I really enjoyed it, thanks a lot for organising it so well, I already feel like I got a lot out of it.   -  JILL

The class was great, exciting about more & already have some great new words! – JO D

Just a quick email to say how much I enjoyed last week’s session – BRYONY

As always I loved the class…  Thank you Nikk for sharing your creativity. – DESREEN

I am absolutely loving the course and learning so much each week as well as having a set time each week to indulge myself in writing and talking about writing with others. It took quite a lot for me to actually start coming although it is something I have wanted to do for a long time and I am really benefiting from both learning structure and technique as well as meeting and learning from like-minded people. Plus – who wouldn’t want to spend an evening huddled around surrounded by books and talking about writing!! I am already worried about what I will do when the course ends, although I suppose the point is that I should be using my time to write then. – SOPHIE

I’ve been really enjoying the course. I find the on-the-spot exercises done during the session really helpful – immediately applying the ideas we discuss certainly makes them sink in more.  It has been really helpful so far; when I sat down to write my first piece I found it a huge struggle; I wrote the same sentence over and over and had a sort of screaming noise in my head! Now – much easier! – MEL B

Nice job – you’re a born leader. – MARK

I just wanted to say thank you for your input. The inspiration from the group has been great – CHAZ

These Tuesdays are really special and I think you have created a little bit of magic there – many thanks – GERRY

I’m coming to the class tomorrow, inspiration is required & I know the class has that in abundance. – MARK

I’ve very much enjoyed the sessions – FRAN

Yesterday was brilliant – thanks. I did not know what to expect, but I came away with some useful advice. I am looking forward to learning more! – ANDREW

I would like to wish you a very successful future. Your students and members – I can already tell – will be in very good hands. – JILLY

That was a very good constructive session last night. I, for one really appreciate your help and guidance – and I really enjoy the openness and informality of the sessions – LINDA

I really enjoyed tonight’s session -  HARRIET

Well I guess the class ends in a week or so and I must tell you that I have learnt a lot and and have hopefully embraced enough for it to filter through to my writing… I love writing and I love that I attended your class…Thanks again for sharing your creativity. I wish you happiness and more colour to your canvass… – DES

traditional christmas curry

Wednesday Group

After last night’s Wednesday Critique Group, we critiquers made our way to Tayyabs in Whitechapel, for curry. The restaurant was bursting at the seams and put me in mind of a Mad Hatter’s tea party for bankers, top-hats and tea-pots exchanged for sharp suits and poppadums. The food was excellent, especially the curried pumpkin, which I’d never tried before but which alone warranted a return visit.

James and Sarah

It has been a great pleasure to work with the many writers who have

Steve's dangerously angled hat

attended the Wednesday group over the past year. In 2009 the group has grown from an offshoot of another group into something fully fledged, with its own unique identity and buzz. I’m very much looking forward to the launch of the Wednesday anthology in January next year and to the proposed writer’s retreat in the spring. Here’s to many fruitful projects and happy writings in 2010 and beyond.

the book launch in brick lane

Helen Gilbert

So the launch of ‘The Bookshop in Brick Lane’ was, by all accounts, a roaring success. We happy anthologists had really pulled out all the stops to get the thing onto the shelf for Christmas, cutting both corners and things that weren’t really corners but had to be cut also, for expediency. Our proof-reader, Warren Davis, worked his tail off turning our early efforts into grammatical, well-spelt pieces of prose. Marybel Moore did a phenomenal job of turning round the factual pieces of the book. Sarah Pidgeon deserves huge credit too, for work that is currently undetectable but which we hope will be introduced in the second edition.

Jill Young

Marybel Moore

And then, suddenly, many months of planning and scribbling and collecting came to fruition: the publisher’s truck rolled into the parking-lot and out first bulk order of the anthology was delivered. They looked pretty good, we were pleased to discover (some serious type setting problems in the proof copy had left us a little nervous). The text looks authoritative; the short stories – 18 of them, look professionally set out; the pieces of non-fiction, woven in among the tales,

Troublesome Trio

Kate Ellis

Mark, Madeleine, Jill

are a pretty good balance of size and content. Russ Willey’s foreword, to quote Camus, gives ‘the whole thing a more official air’. By the way, thanks Russ, for reading our book and believing in us enough to put your name to it.

Kerry McCarthy

The question had always been how to celebrate the delivery of our group effort

It was clear that the venue of choice should be Eastside Books – how could it be otherwise? But the fact is that not all of our group are keen on public readings. Marybel had the inspired idea of bringing the bagels chapter to life and consequently there were bagels a-plenty at the launch. We met at 7, with newly married Tera arriving well ahead of everyone else,

Nicloe Tattersal

Peter Mahon

along with her new husband. They didn’t stick around for

Kiki Otto

the celebration for the very understandable reason that they are on the first day of their honeymoon. It was great to see Tera again after so long and especially good to see her looking so full of beans. And then the crowd descended. I’d say there were 30-40 folk present and the red wine flowed. After thank yous to all concerned we settled down for some storytelling. Mark Dubois, Gareth Storey, Warren Davis and Tim Howard all read for us, some from their anthology contributions, and others from works in progress. Jane Miller read two poems which reflected

Linda Chapple

on the importance of seizing the day and not taking life and time for granted. They were very moving. There was a wonderful moment when I looked

Tim and Ced

Maddy Wynne-Jones

around the room and saw a bookshop full of adults all sitting on the floor enthralled by someone telling a story, and I though yes, this is what it’s all about.

And so, with charming inevitability, to the Brick Lounge, an establishment whose comfy couches and delicious beer have been in no way neglected by our happy band these past two years. It was great to catch up with everyone, particularly those of our group who have moved further afield. 2010 holds all sorts of promise and as the year turns it’s also

Mark Dubois

good to reflect of the accomplishments of the group and its members over the last year, not least of which is the continuation of the group itself. A good note on which to end 2009.

body language

On Friday December 11^th I’m going to be collaborating with Maddy Wynne-Jones’ Tempered Body Dance Company in a day-long workshop investigating the relationship between words, texts and dance. The workshop is almost fully booked. If you’re a dancer interested in participating, please email admin@temperedbody.com. There will be a performance in the evening which will combine improvised words, improvised dance and a combination of pre-written texts and improvised movement along with some performance from members of the Tempered Body Dance Company.

anthology launch

Our recently published anthology of short stories and poetry contains writing from a diverse group of writers who meet each week ar Eastside Books in Brick Lane. The book holds a vivid cast of characters, all of whom have a connection with a certain bookshop in a certain East London street. Private detectives and aid workers rub shoulders with Holocaust survivors and down-and-outs;obsessives discover true love and jackpot winners discover who their true friends are. In amongst the fiction, the true story of Brick Lane and it’s envorons is told in bite-size pieces: from the contemporary East London music scene to warring ideologies, from the issue of East End poverty to the importance of choosing the right beigal, The Bookshop In Brick Lane has writing to suit every taste.

The authors of this book meet each week at Eastside Books in Brick Lane and are:

Linda Chapple, Marybel Moore, N Quentin Woolf, Ced Chen, Stefano Peter Pini, Warren Davis, Helen Gilbert, Shuab Parvez, David Pidgeon, Dan Nicolai, Madeleine North, Marc DuBois, TJ Howard, Jill Young, Tera Brouwer, Gareth Storey, Frances Wasswemann-Bildner, Peter J Mahon, Jane Miller, Kiki Sousa Otto

Please join us for the launch party at 8pm on December 3rd for drinks and nibbles.

the bookshop in brick lane

For rather longer than we might care to admit, members of the Tuesday night Brick Lane

The Bookshop In Brick Lane

Critique Group have been toiling over The Anthology. Marybel Moore has been learning all there is to know about the history of the area, while other writers have used the bookshop as a motif in imaginings of all shapes and sizes, from hardboiled detective fiction to love poems, from gritty drugs stories to wistful rememberings. Now, at last, the anthology is ready. It’s available to buy here at just £6.99