Tony White's Blog
December 18, 2019
I reviewed The Penguin Book of Oulipo for the Guardian
The Penguin Book of Oulipo, a superb selection of 100 Oulipian texts published on the eve of the group’s 60th anniversary. Read more in my Guardian review…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
August 1, 2018
Vote for The Fountain in the Forest in the Guardian “Not the Booker” prize 2018
I’m delighted to learn that The Fountain in the Forest is among some great novels on the Guardian Books “NOT THE BOOKER PRIZE” longlist.
In order to reach the shortlist next week, The Fountain in the Forest needs your vote in the next few days (deadline is 23:59 on Monday 6 August). If you enjoyed the book it would be great if you could vote!
You have to vote for two novels (see full instructions at the link below), but there are plenty of great books to choose from, so as well as supporting The Fountain in the Forest, it’s also a great opportunity to support some really interesting, diverse and radical writing and small and independent presses…
See the longlist, and vote for The Fountain in the Forest here!
Thank you!
In order to reach the shortlist next week, The Fountain in the Forest needs your vote in the next few days (deadline is 23:59 on Monday 6 August). If you enjoyed the book it would be great if you could vote!
You have to vote for two novels (see full instructions at the link below), but there are plenty of great books to choose from, so as well as supporting The Fountain in the Forest, it’s also a great opportunity to support some really interesting, diverse and radical writing and small and independent presses…
See the longlist, and vote for The Fountain in the Forest here!
Thank you!
January 26, 2018
The Fountain in the Forest crossword competition
To celebrate publication of his new novel The Fountain in the Forest, Tony White has devised a cunning crossword of his own for The Fountain in the Forest readers and crossword fans. Some of the answers to this puzzle are relatively straightforward, others will be found in the pages of The Fountain in the Forest.One lucky winner will receive an incredible bundle of Faber books.
The winner will be announced at the ‘Under the Paving Stones’ experimental fiction Faber Social night on 19 February 2018 where Tony White will randomly select one person out of those that answer correctly. The name of the winner will be published, together with the solutions, on 20 February on the Faber & Faber website and Faber social pages.
T&Cs
– Deadline for entries | 12 February 2018
– UK Residents only
For more information and to download crossword and clues: https://www.faber.co.uk/blog/tony-whi...
March 5, 2015
March events
Roll up! Roll up! I've updated my events page with info about some gigs coming up later this month including The Cenotaph Project and the public sphere at the MAC Live in Belfast, a reading at London’s In Yer Ear and readings and climate change chat with Mirko Bonne and Chris Rapley at the Goethe-Institut in London. Come along!
More info on the events page on my site: http://pieceofpaperpress.com/live/
More info on the events page on my site: http://pieceofpaperpress.com/live/
February 24, 2015
Shackleton’s Man Goes South
An exhibition about my novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South at the Science Museum in London has been running for nearly two years in the Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery. There you can find out more about the scientific and literary inspirations behind the novel, including a forgotten science fiction story about climate change that was written in Antarctica in 1911. You can also listen to an audio extract and download a free copy of the novel to your phone or tablet using an innovative touch-screen ebook dispenser!
Shackleton’s Man Goes South was published by the Science Museum in April 2013, and is the first novel the Museum has ever published. An exclusive paperback edition is still available from the Science Museum shop while stocks last. Free ebook editions of Shackleton’s Man Goes South, compatible with all devices, are also available from http://bit.ly/ShMGSth
Find out more about Shackleton’s Man Goes South on my website.
Shackleton's Man Goes South
Shackleton’s Man Goes South was published by the Science Museum in April 2013, and is the first novel the Museum has ever published. An exclusive paperback edition is still available from the Science Museum shop while stocks last. Free ebook editions of Shackleton’s Man Goes South, compatible with all devices, are also available from http://bit.ly/ShMGSth
Find out more about Shackleton’s Man Goes South on my website.
Shackleton's Man Goes South
February 17, 2015
The Contemporary Small Press: A Symposium
I’ll be joining colleagues including Carol Watts, Peter Hughes, Toby Litt, Robert Hampson, Jennifer Cooke, Nicholas Royle, Amy Cutler, Rod Mengham, and Michael Nath, for The Contemporary Small Press symposium and book fair at the University of Westminster on 20 February. Come and join us too. Here’s the blurb:
"The last decade has witnessed a turn to considering the legacies of modernism prevalent and operative within contemporary literature and culture. Within the scholarly discourses surrounding this shift, there has been little discussion of the status of the small press in the twenty-first century, and its vital role in the dissemination of avant-garde writing. This symposium seeks to address the role and status of the small press in the UK as a field of academic enquiry. We aim to offer a forum that will bring together a number of small presses, and facilitate productive dialogue between the diverse publishers working with contemporary innovative writers and poets. Participating presses include Oystercatcher Press, Reality Street, Route, Veer Books, Comma Press, and Equipage. A collection of new writing by writers and poets taking part in the symposium, outLINES: from the Small Press, published in collaboration with Oystercatcher Press, will be available on the day."
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Friday 20th February 2015, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1
The Contemporary Small Press: A Symposium — 10:00-17:00, Book Fair and readings — 18:00-21:00
The symposium is free to all but booking is essential http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-con...
"The last decade has witnessed a turn to considering the legacies of modernism prevalent and operative within contemporary literature and culture. Within the scholarly discourses surrounding this shift, there has been little discussion of the status of the small press in the twenty-first century, and its vital role in the dissemination of avant-garde writing. This symposium seeks to address the role and status of the small press in the UK as a field of academic enquiry. We aim to offer a forum that will bring together a number of small presses, and facilitate productive dialogue between the diverse publishers working with contemporary innovative writers and poets. Participating presses include Oystercatcher Press, Reality Street, Route, Veer Books, Comma Press, and Equipage. A collection of new writing by writers and poets taking part in the symposium, outLINES: from the Small Press, published in collaboration with Oystercatcher Press, will be available on the day."
§
Friday 20th February 2015, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1
The Contemporary Small Press: A Symposium — 10:00-17:00, Book Fair and readings — 18:00-21:00
The symposium is free to all but booking is essential http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-con...
January 15, 2015
britpulp ebook out today
My short story anthology britpulp! was published by Sceptre in 1999, and is published as an ebook for the first time today.
britpulp! features stories from (in order of appearance) Michael Moorcock, Ted Lewis, Richard Allen, Victor Headley, Nicholas Blincoe, Catherine Johnson, Roy A. Bayfield, Steve Aylett, Stella Duffy, Simon Lewis, J.J. Connolly, Jane Graham, Karline Smith, Tim Etchells, Stewart Home, Jenny Valentish, Billy Childish, Darren Francis, China Miéville, Steve Beard, me, and Jack Trevor Story.Brit-pulp! New Fast and Furious Stories from the Literary Underground
Here's what the Metro Newspaper said back in 1999: “It’s the tone of these short stories rather than their content that matters. Fast, tough, grubby, these narratives have the speed of a flying bullet and the taste of a bar at 3am— the literary equivalent indeed of a pulp film short. Pulp greats such as Ted Lewis, of Get Carter fame, and Hitchcock screenwriter Jack Trevor Story meet contemporary hitmen of the underground including Stewart Home and Stella Duffy.” Metro, London
britpulp! features stories from (in order of appearance) Michael Moorcock, Ted Lewis, Richard Allen, Victor Headley, Nicholas Blincoe, Catherine Johnson, Roy A. Bayfield, Steve Aylett, Stella Duffy, Simon Lewis, J.J. Connolly, Jane Graham, Karline Smith, Tim Etchells, Stewart Home, Jenny Valentish, Billy Childish, Darren Francis, China Miéville, Steve Beard, me, and Jack Trevor Story.Brit-pulp! New Fast and Furious Stories from the Literary Underground
Here's what the Metro Newspaper said back in 1999: “It’s the tone of these short stories rather than their content that matters. Fast, tough, grubby, these narratives have the speed of a flying bullet and the taste of a bar at 3am— the literary equivalent indeed of a pulp film short. Pulp greats such as Ted Lewis, of Get Carter fame, and Hitchcock screenwriter Jack Trevor Story meet contemporary hitmen of the underground including Stewart Home and Stella Duffy.” Metro, London
January 4, 2015
Tony White and Liliane Lijn, readings and conversation
October Gallery, London http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/
Liliane Lijn met William S. Burroughs at the now legendary Beat Hotel when they were each exhibiting in Paris in the early 1960s, while author Tony White encountered Burroughs’ work as a teenage art student in the early 1980s. These encounters are still being traced and articulated in each of their works. From collaboration to ‘control’, conversation will range from Lijn’s first meeting with Burroughs that led to her kinetic sculpture Way Out Is Way In Poemdrum (2009) — which is being exhibited for the first time in London at the October Gallery as part of William S. Burroughs: Can You All Hear Me? — to White’s use of the Burroughsian satirical routine in his rare, cult police novel CHARLIEUNCLENORFOLKTANGO (1999).
Readings will include an excerpt from Lijn’s epic feminist prose poem Crossing Map and ‘Electron Notes’ her cut-up statement written in 1964 and published in Signals that year, and ‘A Porky Prime Cut’, White’s tracing of impacts of the first UK TV broadcast in 1983 of Howard Brookner’s seminal documentary Burroughs: The Movie, in his story about Throbbing Gristle fans, Bournemouth soul boys and the birth of acid house. ‘A Porky Prime Cut’ will be performed with a specially composed musical accompaniment by UK acid house pioneer and former Psychic TV collaborator Richard Norris.
Saturday 17 January 2015, 3pm.
Admission £7 Concessions £5
Booking essential: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/minute...
Liliane Lijn met William S. Burroughs at the now legendary Beat Hotel when they were each exhibiting in Paris in the early 1960s, while author Tony White encountered Burroughs’ work as a teenage art student in the early 1980s. These encounters are still being traced and articulated in each of their works. From collaboration to ‘control’, conversation will range from Lijn’s first meeting with Burroughs that led to her kinetic sculpture Way Out Is Way In Poemdrum (2009) — which is being exhibited for the first time in London at the October Gallery as part of William S. Burroughs: Can You All Hear Me? — to White’s use of the Burroughsian satirical routine in his rare, cult police novel CHARLIEUNCLENORFOLKTANGO (1999).
Readings will include an excerpt from Lijn’s epic feminist prose poem Crossing Map and ‘Electron Notes’ her cut-up statement written in 1964 and published in Signals that year, and ‘A Porky Prime Cut’, White’s tracing of impacts of the first UK TV broadcast in 1983 of Howard Brookner’s seminal documentary Burroughs: The Movie, in his story about Throbbing Gristle fans, Bournemouth soul boys and the birth of acid house. ‘A Porky Prime Cut’ will be performed with a specially composed musical accompaniment by UK acid house pioneer and former Psychic TV collaborator Richard Norris.
Saturday 17 January 2015, 3pm.
Admission £7 Concessions £5
Booking essential: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/minute...
November 23, 2014
Missorts Volume II reviewed
Delighted to see an amazing review of my novella Missorts Volume II
“White is our nimblest political novelist … Foxy-T toughened his linguistic resources further and moved him away from pure fixed literary shapes, again showing a resourcefulness and agility that writers from this political, republican, revolutionary imagination have always embedded. Felow novelist Toby Litt recognized this when he cited Foxy T as one of his favourite contemporary novels. White’s writing is a deliberate disjunction from tyranny, something tougher and more disruptive than the Icarusian tones of the modern globalised style. What White is engaged in is an occult activism whereby the subconscious imagination merges the political, scientific, natural, educative and mystical through several types of process … Unlike Coleridge White hasn’t shifted from the radical ground to the conservative but finds new juice in the underground rivers of radical art streams and writing that continue to roll out like a sacred river, kind of measureless. With Tony White’s fiction there is always an engaging lightness of touch, a deft abilty to wind out stories that carry a freightload of edgy material with a beguiling ease. Missorts II is no exception to this. It steps briskly out and quickly brings the reader the sorts of pleasures that only a writer at ease with his material and form can deliver, a series of voices that can hold the geographic and historical action together without any sense of forced engagement … He’s found a way to negotiate the pitfalls of modern fiction”
Read more: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/tony-w...
Buy Missorts Volume II direct from publisher Situations: http://www.situations.org.uk/product/...
“White is our nimblest political novelist … Foxy-T toughened his linguistic resources further and moved him away from pure fixed literary shapes, again showing a resourcefulness and agility that writers from this political, republican, revolutionary imagination have always embedded. Felow novelist Toby Litt recognized this when he cited Foxy T as one of his favourite contemporary novels. White’s writing is a deliberate disjunction from tyranny, something tougher and more disruptive than the Icarusian tones of the modern globalised style. What White is engaged in is an occult activism whereby the subconscious imagination merges the political, scientific, natural, educative and mystical through several types of process … Unlike Coleridge White hasn’t shifted from the radical ground to the conservative but finds new juice in the underground rivers of radical art streams and writing that continue to roll out like a sacred river, kind of measureless. With Tony White’s fiction there is always an engaging lightness of touch, a deft abilty to wind out stories that carry a freightload of edgy material with a beguiling ease. Missorts II is no exception to this. It steps briskly out and quickly brings the reader the sorts of pleasures that only a writer at ease with his material and form can deliver, a series of voices that can hold the geographic and historical action together without any sense of forced engagement … He’s found a way to negotiate the pitfalls of modern fiction”
Read more: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/tony-w...
Buy Missorts Volume II direct from publisher Situations: http://www.situations.org.uk/product/...
November 18, 2014
ICYM - a short story a day Tues to Friday this week
I’ll be tweeting a link to audio of a short story at 9:00 GMT today, Tuesday 18 November and another at the same time each day until the end of this week. Each recording is a collaboration with a different artist or musician, including Johny Brown of the legendary Band of Holy Joy, and UK Acid House pioneer Richard Norris.
Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/tony_white_
Here's the schedule:
Tuesday 9:00am, ‘High-Lands’ — art school, shortwave radio and The Stranglers at the Roundhouse in Jubilee year. My short story for radio featuring a live soundscape accompaniment by Johny Brown of the legendary Band of Holy Joy. ‘High-Lands’ is due for publication in August next year, but was first broadcast in the summer as part of Remote Performances by London Fieldworks and Resonance 104.4fm.
Wednesday 9:00am, ‘A Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ — Did Cortés come to LA? A psychedelic parable presented as Castañeda apocrypha, feat. sound by Steven Hull. My short story which formed the basis of LA artist Hull’s extraordinary Puppet Show at the last Glow Santa Monica, now available on yellow vinyl LP A Puppet Show, with sounds by Gibby Haynes et al.
Thursday 9:00am, ‘A Porky Prime Cut’ — Bournemouth Soul Boys who were so hard core that they were into TG? My short story for SCAN’s Digital Transformations project, this is the studio version of the story as performed with UK Acid House pioneer Richard Norris for the Free University of Glastonbury, at Glastonbury Festival 2011.
Friday 9:00am, ‘Stormbringer’ — My short story for London Fieldworks’ Syzygy project performed in full for the first time in August 2014 with live musical accompaniment from guitarist Peter Lanceley, in a Lochaber living room overlooking the Sound of Arisaig at sunset as part of Remote Performances by London Fieldworks and Resonance 104.4fm. Recently repeated in tribute to the late and legendary bass player Jack Bruce.
Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/tony_white_
Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/tony_white_
Here's the schedule:
Tuesday 9:00am, ‘High-Lands’ — art school, shortwave radio and The Stranglers at the Roundhouse in Jubilee year. My short story for radio featuring a live soundscape accompaniment by Johny Brown of the legendary Band of Holy Joy. ‘High-Lands’ is due for publication in August next year, but was first broadcast in the summer as part of Remote Performances by London Fieldworks and Resonance 104.4fm.
Wednesday 9:00am, ‘A Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ — Did Cortés come to LA? A psychedelic parable presented as Castañeda apocrypha, feat. sound by Steven Hull. My short story which formed the basis of LA artist Hull’s extraordinary Puppet Show at the last Glow Santa Monica, now available on yellow vinyl LP A Puppet Show, with sounds by Gibby Haynes et al.
Thursday 9:00am, ‘A Porky Prime Cut’ — Bournemouth Soul Boys who were so hard core that they were into TG? My short story for SCAN’s Digital Transformations project, this is the studio version of the story as performed with UK Acid House pioneer Richard Norris for the Free University of Glastonbury, at Glastonbury Festival 2011.
Friday 9:00am, ‘Stormbringer’ — My short story for London Fieldworks’ Syzygy project performed in full for the first time in August 2014 with live musical accompaniment from guitarist Peter Lanceley, in a Lochaber living room overlooking the Sound of Arisaig at sunset as part of Remote Performances by London Fieldworks and Resonance 104.4fm. Recently repeated in tribute to the late and legendary bass player Jack Bruce.
Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/tony_white_
