Read below for a digest of the week's news including...
David Rudkin's ShoreZone
Tom Bolton'sAtomic Albion
Dorothy Max Prior's Sex Is No
Emergency
Tai Shani's The Neon Hieroglyph
June-Alison Gibbons' The Pepsi-Cola
Addict
ShoreZone is the first and only collection of
supernatural fiction by David Rudkin, legendary playwright and author of
Penda's Fen. This anthology includes nine enigmatic, chilling and
transporting short tales rich in atmosphere and the uncanny.
“Rudkin’s intense spiritual, intellectual, psychological and
emotional investigations excavate in the interstices between certainties…
For readers and followers of Rudkin’s singular trajectory over many
decades, this diptych of story constellations, as ancient, present and prescient
as anything in his oeuvre, are unexpected but truly welcome gifts,
manifestations of a lifelong enquiry that is among the most charged and profound
these islands have witnessed.”
— From the foreword by Gareth Evans
Designed and illustrated by Zoë Taylor, ShoreZone will be
published in a limited edition of 500 high quality hardbacks and include a
signed illustrated bookplate. Image credit: SF Said.
Atomic Albion is a journey around Britain’s
nuclear power stations and the country itself. From the Essex marshes to the
Anglesey coast, from the Dungeness shingle to the far north of Scotland, Tom
Bolton explores how nuclear sites shape the places around them, and enters the
awesome world of nuclear power and weapons.
The United Kingdom has sixteen nuclear power stations. Most go under the radar,
but their presence is enormous, both physically and culturally. They divide
opinion like nothing else. Are they relics of a past era, or a crucial part of
our futures? Are they cathedrals of science or temples of doom?
Focussing on the 1980s, Sex Is No Emergency by
Dorothy Max Prior recalls her life as it becomes ever more surreal and bemusing:
days drumming and touring with infamous experimental pansexual psychedelic rock
group Psychic TV; exploring London and New York City’s queer clubbing
undergrounds; weaving through the tangled worlds of the UK’s indie music
scene at the height of its influence. Not to mention ballroom dancing, birthing
babies, breastfeeding, and moving to Brighton to become a performance artist.
Wise, wry, and endlessly charming, this is a sparkling account of bold,
adventurous creativity featuring cameos from Björk, Derek Jarman, Madonna,
Ray Harryhausen and a host of others.
Read her book The Neon Hieroglyph from 2022
that weaves together a series of painterly and poetic considerations on a
feminized history of the rye fungus Ergot, the chemical basis of LSD.
Contributions from Amy Hale and Caspar Heinemann
Written in 1981 by June-Alison Gibbons when she was only sixteen, The
Pepsi-Cola Addict is considered one of the great works of twentieth-century
outsider literature. More than just a literary curiosity, this tale of a
teenager whose passion for a world-famous cola drink threatens to ruin his life
is the uniquely vivid expression of a young woman trying to make sense of the
confusing, often brutal, world in which she found herself.
Originally published by a vanity press who took £500 from its young author
and gave her only a single book in return, it’s thought that fewer than
ten original copies still exist. Shortly after its publication, June-Alison and
her sister Jennifer would become infamous as “The Silent Twins” and
find themselves cruelly incarcerated for over a decade in Broadmoor psychiatric
hospital.
Created in collaboration with June-Alison Gibbons, this new edition makes her
remarkable vision widely-available for the first time.
