Greg Thorpe's Blog

Since I last blogged here I have been travelling on the typical rollercoaster that is a writer's life. I was signed by an agent to work on my collection of short stories, the most exciting development in years. I then had something like ten rejections in a row.

Next I had my essay 'Fire Ireland' published in one of my dream publications, Banshee. The essay was also translated for publication in an Italian literary journal.

Then my agent moved on from her agency role, which sadly means that you get un-signed. I felt defeated, and the rejections kept coming. Then, unbelievably, I received a special commendation in The Stinging Fly / FBA Fiction Prize for my story 'Stars', and was once again flooded with the dopamine of approval. Here's what they said:

The judges also highly commended two other stories: ‘Stars’ by Greg Thorpe and ‘The Big Why’ by Brendan Killeen. Set in New York and San Francisco and suffused with an aching tenderness for a lost time, ‘Stars’ is a story about a gay man coming out and finding his people. Controlled, confident writing, full of sensuous, glowing imagery, all underscored with an uneasy undertone that snags on the attention and inexorably draws you – as the narrator himself is drawn – towards an ending that is beautiful and brutal in equal measure. A hugely impressive piece of work.

Incredible. I am attempting to leverage this big thumbs up into another agency signing, but who knows what the future holds. I'm currently enjoyably wrestling with a new short story called 'The Elevator Boy' set in 1920s Paris and how apt it is that his life goes up and down, up and down.

This month I have a new short story published in Confingo #18. Confingo Publishing are a terrific independent publishing house in South Manchester. The story is called 'NeverLeft' which is a non-binary sci-fi missing person plot twister. There are some other great pieces in this issue so I feel especially proud. Order your copy here.

I also just received the news that my story 'Three Sailors' is on the shortlist for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2023.. It will be reprinted in their Creative Writing Annual in December of this year and I am so excited to see this story in print in the UK. It was previously published by the fantastic Foglifter in San Francisco in an issue which went on to be Lambda Award nominated so the good luck seems to have persisted. Wish me some more luck all the same, I could do with the prize money...!

I aimed for a book a week this year and the way to do it is honestly to get into audiobooks as well as regular books so you can also ‘read' while you are walking and washing up which is ALL I seem to do these days.

A great loss this year when Hilary Mantel died, a reader myself and my Auntie Dee shared, thanks to Dee's insistence, so it hurts all the more.

Here are some 2022 highlights:

Best poetry: C+nto and othered poems by Joelle Taylor.
Salved a particular hurt I hadn't even put a name to. Summons up the dead and forgotten with such bravado and love. Deep and inventive. I cannot WAIT for her novel now.
Honorary mention: Alive at the end of the world by Saeed Jones.

Best biography: Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt.
Felt perpetually hungover reading this. As much a love letter to Soho and the fusty art bacchanalia that dwelled there as it is to the curmudgeonly genius that was Francis. Adore.
Honorary mention: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.

Most read author: Muriel Spark.
I just went for it with Mu this year, should’ve done it years ago. Only now realised what a huge influence she is on Fay Weldon. They’re all about morality. Nobody writes about that any more do they? The men and women all equally useless and ponderous. And so funny. God she was brilliant.

Best new fiction: At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren John Joseph.
Actual inventive queer fiction that touches nerves and won’t explain itself other than through a thorough explication of actual emotions. Made me pine for that run of sticky summers I spent in the gay triangle of East London. Where are they now, all the boys? Well some of them are dead. Read this NOW.
Honorary mention: Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib.

Best non fiction: Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin.
Perfect companion to LJJ’s novel in some ways, but also a global, historical and anecdotal letter of love and hate to the gay bar and a sad reflection on what our lives will belike when they vanish, which they will.
Honorary mention: Not All Roses by Dave Haslam.

Most disappointing: Here They Come With Their Make Up On: Suede, Coming Up . . . And More Tales From Beyond The Wild Frontiers by Jane Savidge
Imagine a press release that’s 150 words long written by the kind of person who uses words like ‘moniker’ and ’sophomore effort’. Boring reflections on a thrilling time. Ah well.

Best re-read: Close To The Knives by David Wojnarowicz.
I will probably be reading this the year I die. An even better writer than he was an artist and that’s saying something. His pin sharp takedown of the horror of American life will only gain volume as capitalism destroys democracy there. He would be horrified to know there is a still such a thing as an HIV / AIDS crisis. Saintly in his wisdom. RIP David.
Honorary mention: The Wilde Century by Alan Sinfield.

Should have read years ago: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.
I wish I had read this and Of Mice and Men and To Kill A Mockingbird and A Confederacy of Dunces all in one year, maybe aged 17, and I would have started writing there and then. She is incredible.
Honorary mention: Man’s Search For meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.

Unless I finish ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ on the overnight train to Vienna next week, I think these 65 titles will constitute my reading for 2021.

I finally got round to some overdue classics including The Great Gatsby, Wide Sargasso Sea, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jane Eyre, The Big Sleep; all of them honestly wonderful. To The Lighthouse, just not for me I’m afraid, sorry Vee Dub.

Memoirs I loved were by Irish women: Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Rememberings’, Edna O’Brien’s ‘Country Girl’. Both brilliant, sad, funny, outrageous. I was also compelled by Brett Anderson’s trembling descent into drugs in ‘Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn’.

It’s a good year for poetry when Andrew McMillan has new work out. On reflection ‘pandemonium’ is my favourite of his so far. Confidently understated, harrowing, precise. I also fell in love with Sinead Morrissey, Mark Doty, Li Young Lee, Paul Durcan and Ocean Vuong, all of which were massively overdue.

In historical writing I was blown away by James Shapiro ‘A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare’ which made him more real than anything I remember.

Special mention for brilliant books by brilliant friends:
Caleb Everett ‘The Moston Diaries’
Tawseef Khan 'The Muslim Problem’
Dave Haslam ‘All You Need Is Dynamite’
Maz Hedgehog (ed) ‘Tell Me Who We Were Before Life Made Us’
Recommend ALL of them without hesitation.

My novel of the year was Iris Murdoch’s ‘The Sea, The Sea’, Booker Winner from the year I was born, and just pipping Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’ as my fave. Next year I will read more of both authors, I was really spellbound.

Non-fiction of the year is definitely Sarah Schulman’s layered, urgent and totally dynamic ’Let The Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, 1987-1993’, a vital record and necessary ideological grenade for the fight(s) ahead. I also loved Gabor Mate’s ‘The Body Keeps The Score’ which helped me move into new self-acceptance, and Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Talking To Strangers’ for loving across difference.

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I set myself a target of 35 books for the year but reading became my main lockdown comfort so I ended up reading 50. That’s 10,953 pages apparently. So much turning!
If we are pals on Goodreads you know I don’t really enjoy rating books but here’s my ‘system’ anyway:
1 and 2 star books I just don’t carry on reading. I don’t finish anything I don’t like, I’m not 22 any more. Time is ticking!
Anything that especially impacts on me gets 5 stars, meaning I think it could not be bettered by that author or any other and I probably loved it.
Everything else you can assume is a 3 or 4 star book, whatever that means, but I liked it and you should read it.

Special mentions:
It’s always a joy to read books by friends so shout outs for new poetry debuts from Afshan D'souza-Lodhi and Konstantinos Tsolakis, plus Okechukwu Nzelu’s debut novel ‘The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney’ which is making big waves and rightly so, and for Dave Haslam’s beautiful Art Decades titles, ‘Searching For Love: Courtney Love in Liverpool’ and ‘Sylvia Plath in Paris, 1956’. And Katie McCabe’s ‘More than a Muse’ which I did a great author Zoom about. I recommend all of these without hesitation. Huge props to the writers, I just think you’re wonderful.
The Constant Companion Award goes to Patti Smith. I read or re-read all her writing this year and she is a talisman of joy and clarity for me. I just glance at a few sentences of hers and feel there is a good true artist still at work in the world.
The Eventually Got Around To It award is jointly held by Isherwood’s ‘Berlin Stories’ and ‘Scoop’, my first Evelyn Waugh. Pristine and camp and shocking, all of it.
The Short Story Genius Award is shared by Alice Munro’s delicate brilliant ‘Dance of the Happy Shades’ and Allen Barnett’s devastating hilarious AIDS cycle ‘The Body and its Dangers’, the latter inexplicably out of print I think. Thank you to Monica for the recommend!
My books of the year were these two:
Hilary Mantel’s ‘The Mirror and the Light’. The wait for it was interminable and I didn’t want the book to end. Every page utterly gripping and the elements of plague and power and fake news have never been more current. She closed the gap in the years for us. One day I will read the whole lot again. Maybe Lockdown 3.0!
Then ‘Are You Somebody?’ by Nuala O’Faolain which has left such an imprint on me. One of the best memoirs I have ever read and the book that got my Mum back into reading. When we arrived in Dublin, by joyful coincidence, there was an exhibition about Nuala’s book at the Literature Museum and I stayed a whole afternoon and cried a little bit when I left. Oh Nuala. I can’t explain why I love it so much you have to read it.

You can find links to all of these books below. Please shop indie or direct from author where you can! For second hand books, Better World Books supports literacy schemes:
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/

Big titles for 2021 will be Tawseef Khan's ‘The Muslim Problem’ and Sarah Schulman’s ‘Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993’. Can’t wait!

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Here are some places where people have mentioned my writing, always a thrill, if nerve-wracking:

"Possibly my favourite anthology of 2015 was Transactions of Desire (HOME Publications) edited by Omar Kholeif and Sarah Perks and published to coincide with an exhibition, 'The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things', at HOME. A number of stories stood out, in particular those by Emma Jane Unsworth, Adam O’Riordan, Jason Wood, Katie Popperwell and Greg Thorpe, whose ‘1961’ takes place against the backdrop of what has been called ‘the greatest night in showbusiness history’, the night Judy Garland played Carnegie Hall on 23 April 1961."
– From the Introduction to 'Best British Short Stories 2016', Nicholas Royle, Salt Publishing.



"If you are a Judy Garland fan, the date of this story tells it all. April 23, 1961, the night of the famous Garland Carnegie Hall concert that has been called "the greatest night in show business history." Garland sang 27 songs to an audience that included Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, Julie Andrews, Rock Hudson, and many other stars.
In a performance that was recorded by Capitol Records and released in a two-album set a few months later, it was interrupted by numerous applause, and when the first few bars of "Over the Rainbow" were played, they almost brought down the house. You can watch a pirated short home movie clip on You Tube, and if you have Amazon Prime, you can listen to the whole concert. That's what I am doing as I write this. Or maybe you have a copy of the old album, as many do. This story is built on the context of Garland's famous status as a gay icon. It focuses on a man in his mid-twenties in New York, who appears to be straight, but is attracted to an older man from Chicago he meets in a bar, who, albeit married, appears to be gay. They go to the famous Garland concert, but near the end, when Garland is singing "If Love Were All," the narrator rejects the man's modest advances and leaves. The story ends eight years later, when with his wife and son, he reads that Judy Garland is dead at 47. The story is delicate and restrained and works by saying very little. It is the clipped syntax of a lonely man who may or may not be gay caught on the cusp of, as he says, ""I don't know what to do about any of it."..."

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Alan rated it: I really liked it, an excellent addition to the series with established writers like Leone Ross, Janice Galloway, Graham Mort and D J Taylor on top form. Also sharp pieces from writers I know like David Gaffney, Stuart Evers and John Saul. Of the unknowns (to me) I really liked the two stories named after years - 1961 and 1977 I think (I haven't got the book with me - will come back and fill in details), the one set in the call centre, the babies are coming! (Shepard), the one with the empty funeral urn (due to the super hot cremation no remains remain) set in the near future (I think), and the meditation on Belling oven control knobs. Excellent, engaging collection."

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A foray into creative non-fiction. A piece of tiny travel writing. Something out of time for June! Thanks to Tiny Essays for publishing, a great project!

'Christmas in Geroskipou'

I have been reading flash fiction lately and have been won over by the power of brevity, the short sharp visions of another world, like seeing into a stranger's room as your train sails by their building. I tried my hand at some of my own flash, based on a memory that a character of mine experienced in a story that ultimately never got written. But the 'memory' remained. It's called 'My 1980s' and looks at the peak years of the AIDS crisis in London. Here it is published by the good people at Ellipsis Zine.