Atlantic shortlisted for Indie Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards

Atlantic Books has been shortlisted for Independent Publisher of the Year at The British Book Awards (the Nibbies). Giving their reasoning behind the shortlisting, The Bookseller said:

Shortlisted here for the third year in a row, Atlantic continued its renaissance as a general indie that combines commercial and critical success. John Kampfner and Chris Atkins gave it Sunday Times spots, and its backlist had a hatful of steady sellers.

In addition, Mike Harpley, publishing director for non-fiction, has been shortlisted for Editor of the Year. The Bookseller said:

Atlantic Books’ non-fiction sales have more than doubled since Harpley arrived there five years ago. He generated two unexpected but distinctively Atlantic bestsellers in 2020: John Kampfner’s Why The Germans Do It Better and Chris Atkins’ A Bit of a Stretch.

The winners will be announced via a digital event on the 13th May.

Allen & Unwin to publish How to be a Rock Star by Shaun Ryder

Allen & Unwin have acquired World rights all languages to How to be a Rock Star by Shaun Ryder and will publish in hardback and trade paperback in October 2021. Publisher Ed Faulkner bought the rights from Matthew Hamilton at The Hamilton Agency.

As lead singer of Happy Mondays and Black Grape, Shaun Ryder was the Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of his generation. A true rebel, who formed and led not one but two seminal bands, he’s had number-one albums, headlined Glastonbury, toured the world numerous times, taken every drug under the sun, been through rehab – and come out the other side as a national treasure.

Now, for the first time, Shaun lifts the lid on the real inside story of how to be a rock star. With insights from three decades touring the world, which took him from Salford to San Francisco, from playing working men’s clubs to headlining Glastonbury and playing in front of the biggest festival crowd the world has ever seen, in Brazil, in the middle of thunderstorm. From recording your first demo tape to having a No. 1 album, Shaun gives a fly-on-the-wall look at the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle – warts and all: how to be a rock star – and how not to be a rock star.

From numerous Top of the Pops appearances to being banned from live TV, from being a figurehead of the acid-house scene to finding himself in rehab, Shaun has seen it all. In this book he pulls the curtain back on the debauchery of the tour bus, ridiculous riders, run-ins with record companies, drug dealers and the mafia, and how he forged the most remarkable comeback of all time.

Shaun Ryder has been the subject of several films, written a Sunday Times bestselling autobiography, was runner-up on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and is a star of Celebrity Gogglebox. Shaun is working with his co-writer Luke Bainbridge who also worked with Shaun on his autobiography Twisting My Melon.

Ed Faulkner, Publisher at Allen & Unwin UK, says, “Having grown up listening to the Happy Mondays and Black Grape I can’t think of anyone better or funnier than the legendary Shaun Ryder to lift the lid on what it is really like to be a rock star.  How to be a Rock Star is a hilarious, swaggering, hugely entertaining book full of classic rock ’n’ roll anecdotes and stories from a bone fide rock legend.  We can’t wait to publish it.”

Shaun Ryder comments, “I’ve been the lead singer of two of Britain’s greatest rock’n’roll groups of the last 30 years, and in that time I’ve seen everything, from the biggest highs to the lowest lows. I’ve lived the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll dream … and the nightmare. In How to be a Rock Star, I’ll tell you the truth about some of the Mondays and Black Grape myths, from the early days of the Hacienda, to me and Bez having guns pulled on us while buying crack in the New York, to hanging out backstage with the Rolling Stones, what it’s really like to work in the studio with members of the Velvet Underground, New Order and Talking Heads, and why it’s bollocks that Happy Mondays caused Factory Records to go bankrupt. I’ll also tell you how I managed to come out the other side and become a TV celebrity, how my life’s changed, and what advice I’d tell the 20-year-old Shaun Ryder if I met him now.”

How to be a Rock Star will publish in hardback, trade paperback and e-book in October 2021 on the Allen & Unwin imprint of Atlantic Books in the UK.

Allen & Unwin to publish The Reckoning by Mary L Trump

Allen & Unwin to publish new book The Reckoning: America’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal by Mary L Trump, author of the number one international bestseller, Too Much and Never Enough

Allen & Unwin have acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The Reckoning: America’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal by Mary L Trump and will publish in hardback and trade paperback in July 2021. UK Publisher Ed Faulkner bought the rights with A&U ANZ Publishing Director Tom Gilliatt from Kerry Nordling at St Martin’s Publishing Group.

Mary L Trump is the author of the international #1 bestseller, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Mary Trump holds a PhD from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University, and has taught graduate courses in trauma, psychopathology, and developmental psychology.

The Reckoning will examine America’s national trauma, rooted in its long history of slavery and civil rights abuses, but dramatically exacerbated by the impact of recent events and the Trump administration’s corrupt and immoral policies.

America’s failure to acknowledge this trauma, let alone root it out, has allowed it to metastasize. Whether it manifests itself in rising levels of rage and hatred, or hopelessness and apathy, the stress of living in a country many no longer recognize has affected everyone. America is suffering from PTSD – a new leader alone cannot fix it.

An enormous amount of healing must be done to rebuild faith in America’s leadership and hope for the nation. It starts with The Reckoning.

Ed Faulkner, Publisher at Allen & Unwin UK, says, “Given the recent scenes at the US Capitol to which we looked on from overseas in horror, it feels like this book is more important than ever.  Mary Trump’s experience as a clinical psychologist, as well as her personal knowledge of the former president, means she is uniquely placed to help transform people’s understanding of America’s trauma and its future.  It is a huge honour and privilege for us to publish it.”

Tom Gilliatt, Publishing Director, Allen & Unwin Australia, says, “What we’ve seen over the last four years is that America’s trauma is the world’s trauma. Understanding the causes of that trauma and the potential paths to healing have never been more vital. Mary Trump’s professional and personal vantage points give her a unique insight into what has been the most fundamental challenge to American democracy and American institutions in our lifetime. We look forward to help making her hugely timely and important book the bestseller it deserves to be.”

Mary Trump comments, “For four years, Donald Trump has inflicted a series of traumas upon the American people, targeting anyone he perceived as the ‘other’ as an enemy. Women were discounted and derided, the sick were dismissed as weak and unworthy of help, immigrants and minorities were demonized and discriminated against, and money was elevated above all else. Finally, he demonstrated his stunning lack of concern for the American people with his wilful mishandling of the pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse. In short, he transformed our country into a macro version of my malignantly dysfunctional family.”

The Reckoning will publish in hardback, trade paperback and e-book in July 2021 on the Allen & Unwin imprint of Atlantic Books in the UK, and by Allen & Unwin in Australia and New Zealand.

Atlantic Books acquires ‘dazzlingly original’ guide to fandom in politics

Atlantic Books has signed up Phoenix CS Andrews’ dazzlingly original I Heart Politics: Why Fandom Explains What’s Really Going On. Editor James Pulford acquired World English rights from Jaime Marshall at J. P. Marshall Literary Agency for publication in hardback, trade paperback and e-book in September 2022.

From Brexit rallies to the Capitol Hill Riot and QAnon to Extinction Rebellion, I Heart Politics argues that to understand what’s really happening behind the headlines we need to think about one overlooked phenomenon: fandom. Taking readers on an irresistible adventure from the ancient world to the present, I Heart Politics is a surprising response to the zeitgeist and a brilliant illustration of how, when it comes to many of the most important and polarising issues of our time, we’re much less rational creatures than we’d like to believe.

Phoenix CS Andrews is a writer and researcher, specialising in politics, fandom and internet cultures from conspiracy theories and radicalisation to TikTok and data privacy. Phoenix has written for The Times, Independent, Slate, New Statesman and Prospect and they have appeared on BBC Radio 4, the World Service and Times Radio.

Phoenix said, ‘I’m overjoyed to be signing with Atlantic. It felt like the whole team both got the book and me and I felt supported from the off. Our intense love/hate relationship with politics and politicians has a much longer and deeper history than most people imagine, and that’s what this book is all about.’

James Pulford said, ‘This is a totally new kind of politics book by a singular and unforgettable voice. We are thrilled to welcome Phoenix to Atlantic.’

A Brief History of Puzzles – the answer!

The Solution to the Prize Puzzle in William Hartston’s A Brief History of Puzzles

 

The Clue:

To reach your end, you’ll need the ends,

Begin at the last and work back.

Add one each time, repeat these trends,

And soon you’ll find the knack.

But remember, no matter how hard you look,

You won’t find the answer without this book.

 

The Puzzle:

What letter completes this sequence:

r, o, m, i, f, a, h, q, x …

 

Explanation and answer:

In the first line of clue, ‘the ends’ refers to the final letters of the chapters of the book.

‘Begin at the last and work back’: take the chapters in reverse order, starting with the last.

‘Add one each time’: start with the last letter of the last chapter, then the penultimate letter of the second-to-last, then the third letter from the end of the next, and so on.

This process produces the letters in the puzzle:

r (last letter of ‘unfair’)

o (second to last in ‘you’)

m (third from end in ‘man’)

i (fourth from end in ‘logical’)

and so on.

The final letter in the sequence will therefore be the tenth letter from the end of chapter 1, which is ‘i’.

Atlantic reissues Hitchens

Atlantic Books is to release new mass-market paperback editions of twelve of Christopher Hitchens’ works, including God Is Not Great, Hitch-22 and Mortality, with striking new cover designs.

The new editions were designed by Nathan Burton and art directed by Richard Evans, Atlantic Books Art Director.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and Visiting Professor in liberal studies at the New School in New York. He was the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Theresa, Henry Kissinger and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the international bestseller and National Book Award nominee, God Is Not Great.

2021 marks ten years since Hitchens’ death on 15 December 2011.

Hitchens’ works have sold 445,656 copies through Nielsen bookscan since his death. Atlantic Books M.D. Will Atkinson says: ‘Looking across the whole of Hitchens’ vast range of work is to see a truly dazzling display off erudition, acuity and bravura. He was one of the finest and bravest thinkers and writers of his generation.’

Atlantic Books will publish all twelve paperbacks in May 2021 supported by a digital marketing campaign.

Atlantic Books to publish book on the future of health by Sir David Haslam

Atlantic Books is to publish The Price of Your Life: How Healthcare Became Too Expensive by the former chair of NICE (The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence) Sir David Haslam. Publishing Director for Non-Fiction Mike Harpley acquired World rights from the Blake Friedmann Agency. It will be published in hardback and eBook in early 2022.

With a single drug in the UK currently costing £340,000 per patient per year, or a gene therapy in the USA being costed at $1.2million, who should get such treatments and how can we begin to afford them? Should we all be entitled to timely mental health therapy? How should we care for our old?

As we grapple with the world’s worst pandemic for a century, our minds are on our health more than ever. But what should we rightfully expect of doctors? In this original and thought-provoking book, Sir David Haslam explores what good healthcare should achieve and asks how we pay for it. Informed by patient stories and data from across the world – from US big pharma to Britain’s NHS – this is an urgent and often moving examination of our most important asset: our health.

Sir David Haslam is former chair of NICE, former president of the Royal College of GPs, and former president of the British Medical Association. He began his illustrious career as a GP.

Mike Harpley said,

‘David has decades of experience at the top of the NHS, and as Chair of NICE, he was ultimately responsible for some of the most difficult and controversial decisions in British healthcare. This book is utterly unique, controversial, and fascinating. It highlights the impossible choices that countries face with ageing populations as technology and healthcare collide.’

David Haslam said,

‘I have spent many years watching the NHS struggle with escalating costs, infinite demand and finite budgets. This has become even more apparent in the COVID crisis. Something has to give. This book is my attempt to explore this vital issue and explore how we – and other countries – might deal with it.’

Sam Hodder at Blake Friedman said,

‘The challenges confronted by The Price of Your Life have never been more pressing, and no-one is more qualified to be our guide than Sir David Haslam. I’m delighted that Atlantic will be publishing this timely and important book.’

Peter Blackstock appointed Publisher of Grove Press UK

Morgan Entrekin, CEO & Publisher of Grove Atlantic, is pleased to announce that Peter Blackstock has been appointed to the new role of Publisher for the Grove Press UK imprint, with daily operations continuing to be run by the team at Atlantic Books in London. Originally from England, Blackstock moved to New York and started at Grove in 2011. In the US, he has published authors including Bernardine Evaristo, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Sayaka Murata, and Douglas Stuart, longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize for Shuggie Bain. He will remain in New York and continue all his previous editorial duties at Grove Atlantic but will travel to the UK to attend sales conferences and for other work-related visits when this becomes possible.

Grove Press UK was created in 2010 by Morgan Entrekin, the co-founder of Atlantic Books, following the sale of Grove Atlantic’s controlling interest in Atlantic Books in 2009. Over the last decade Grove Press UK has published over 100 titles across literary fiction, crime fiction, and narrative nonfiction. Writers published by Grove Press UK include Mark Bowden, Jesse Eisenberg, Eileen Myles, Gay Talese, John Lawton, Patrick Hoffman, Susan Isaacs, Andrus Kivirähk, John Kennedy Toole, Edgar Snow, and Charmaine Craig. Grove Press’s UK publications have earned accolades including making the longlists for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Dylan Thomas Prize, the shortlists for the Jhalak Prize and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and have become bestsellers.

Peter Blackstock will direct the imprint, working closely with Group Associate Publisher Clare Drysdale and the rest of the Atlantic Books team, including Campaigns Executive Sophie Walker, who will now manage marketing for all Grove Press UK titles, and Head of Campaigns and Associate Publisher Karen Duffy, who handles all publicity campaigns for the list. Led by Clare Drysdale in London, the Atlantic Books team will continue to handle sales and distribution for the list of 12-15 titles a year.

Morgan Entrekin explains the renewed commitment to the imprint:

Grove Press UK was established with the strategy of coordinating publications in all English-language markets. We bring our author-centric philosophy to our publishing there, and we’ve had success with many of our books, from Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s Small Fry to Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field to Scotty Bowers’s Full Service, so we’re excited to be doing more with the imprint there.

Grove Atlantic will also continue to license books to UK publishers selectively.

Blackstock told The Bookseller:

I’m thrilled to be working with Grove Press UK in a more official way and to look for opportunities to bring in select authors we aren’t publishing in the States. The team at Atlantic are amazing and it will be a joy to work more closely with them. I’m crossing fingers that a non-virtual meeting might be possible before too long!

For the last 10 years, Grove Press UK has exclusively published titles where Grove Atlantic is the American publisher, but Grove Atlantic is now acquiring UK rights for select titles it is not publishing in the US. The first acquisition of this type is Jennet Conant’s The Great Secret, forthcoming from W.W. Norton in September and from Grove Press UK on October 1, with Grove acquiring UK & Commonwealth rights from Kris Dahl at ICM Partners: an untold piece of military history and a surprising story of medical ingenuity.

Other titles for Autumn 2020 include a new book by political humorist P. J. O’Rourke, whose last seven books have all been published by Grove Press UK. A Cry from the Far Middle is a call for ‘extreme moderation’ at a time when American politics have become more polarized than ever. Bradford Morrow’s literary mystery The Forger’s Daughter, centering around a highly rare Edgar Allen Poe book, is coming in November, and the newest edition of former Granta editor John Freeman’s eponymous literary anthology-journal Freeman’s will be published in October, on the theme of love. Next year brings Grove Press UK books from Rickie Lee Jones, Takis Würger, Alexander Wolff, Francisco Goldman, and Julie Kavanagh.

Author Q&A with Noriko Morishita

Author of The Wisdom of Tea Noriko Morishita spills her secrets of mindfulness and why the art of the Japanese Tea Ceremony matters so much to her in our Author Q&A. Translated by Naomi Mizuno.

Can you tell us a little about what inspired you to share your life learnings with readers? Was there a moment of epiphany?

After a period of several years from when I first started attending tea ceremony classes, I became aware of my senses, realising, for example, that the sound of rain and wind changes with the seasons, and coming to recognise the distinct smell of rain. These seem like small things, but in fact they were big discoveries. Sharpened senses transformed my outlook, adding a whole new dimension to the picture I had been seeing. I felt like I was appreciating the world for the very first time, seeing it expand before my eyes It was at that moment, while sitting in a small tea ceremony room, that I made up my mind to be here in the present, to live my life – feeling like being in the middle of a field, exposed to the wind.

I wanted to share with someone this newfound awareness of mine, to have my feelings recognised. I sincerely hoped to find that others had experienced a similar sensation during their tea ceremony lessons, and to talk about it with them. However, as soon as I tried to put my feelings into words, I found I could not express what I wanted to convey, which was very frustrating.

One day, during a casual chat with an editor friend, I mentioned the way the tea ceremony had heightened my sensitivity to the world around me and my frustration about not being able to express it. The editor had no experience of the Japanese tea ceremony herself, so she listened to me open-mindedly, enjoying and marvelling at my story, impressed by it. Encouraged by her reaction, I thought again about writing about it, hoping someone else could relate to the sensation I had in the tea-ceremony room, and say, I know what you mean.

Even so, while writing this book, I continued to worry whether anyone would really understand me. It wasn’t until it was published here in Japan, and I received many positive comments from readers, thanking me for putting their indescribable feelings into words, that I finally realised that I was not the only one! I was filled with happiness.

Mindfulness as a concept is widely discussed these days, but it’s often difficult to incorporate it into our everyday lives. Is there a simple way to get started?

OK, I will lead my life mindfully from now on, focusing on this very moment! People may resolve to do this, but it is not that easy to be mindful. As soon as you sit and close your eyes, you think, Oh, I forgot to buy some bread! or I needed to get in touch with my office. You find you can’t concentrate on that very moment, overwhelmed by mundane thoughts, regrets about the past and worries about the future. However, we occasionally find ourselves in a state of mindfulness, unintentionally, without realising it: those moments when we devote ourselves to doing something specific. For example, when we’re focused on cleaning the windows, or mowing the grass – when we’re being single-minded. On such occasions, we forget about our regrets and anxieties, and simply live in the moment by concentrating on whatever it is we are doing. Basically, I think the shortcut to ‘mindfulness’ is to get engrossed in something.

The tea ceremony is a traditional art form that focuses on the specific daily exercise of making a bowl of delicious tea. To do this, we build up a charcoal fire to boil the water, rinse a bowl, wipe it clean with a cloth, put tea powder in the bowl, add the hot water and then make the tea. The tea masters in the past introduced and finessed what we practise today as the tea ceremony by ordering these daily tasks to make them more efficient, logical, and hygienic, ensuring the aesthetic beauty of the practice from all angles, too, and so raising it to a supreme art form.

When I started my lessons, I was surprised to find the procedure was complicated and detailed. In order to carry out such steps properly, one by one, I had no extra space left in my mind to worry about anything else. How do I wipe the bowl in front of me? In what way should I pour hot water into this bowl? These were the only things I could focus on. As a result, when I was practising the tea ceremony, I was being mindful, which I only came to realise much later. So, although I think learning the way to make the most delicious black tea, in the most tasteful manner, is a simple way to practise mindfulness, it’s just an example – mindfulness does not have to have anything to do with tea. It could be dancing, singing, cleaning the house or walking – whatever you like to devote your attention to will be a way of practising mindfulness.

In what ways have you found putting into practice the lessons learned through the tea ceremony helpful for you personally? How do you think they will benefit western readers unaccustomed to such ceremonies?

A tea ceremony lesson’s purpose seems only to be to learn how to make tea or to learn traditional Japanese manners. But in reality, a tea ceremony’s lesson is not the method itself, but what we gain from that method.

Let me to talk about the experience of my friend who is learning the art of the tea ceremony. She used to be a teacher in a public junior high school. Back then, her school had been seriously troubled by some students’ resistance and violence, which made them difficult to teach. One day, after school, some students went on the rampage, breaking classroom windows. As a teacher, my friend had to stay late to settle things, which made her exhausted, both physically and mentally. It was the day of her tea ceremony class, but she phoned her tea master, who was waiting for her, and told her she would not be coming that evening: ‘I’m sorry, master. I had trouble at work so I’m mentally tired out. As I don’t feel like attending class today, please allow me to skip it.’ Instead of accepting this, the master invited her gently, saying, ‘Just come for a bowl of tea.’ When she eventually arrived at the tea ceremony class, her master was waiting for her and made her a bowl of tea. It was such a delightful bowl of tea, my friend told me.

Typically, in the practice of tea, we hear a sound like wind blowing through pine trees (which tea masters call matsukaze), coming from the kettle of boiling water. When we add cold water to the kettle, the sound of matsukaze stops. Then, after a period of silence, it comes to life again, starting to make a small sound. While my friend was lost in this sound, she felt her broken heart, her tired-out spirit, recovering.

I too had many experiences during tea classes after a bad day at work, finding my mood slowly calmed and my worries lifted as I made good use of all senses during my lessons. Although I learned ‘how to make tea’ in the literal sense during these classes, I also learned how to concentrate on a task so now, whenever I’m feeling agitated by the world outside, I think of those lessons and am able to calm my mind and restore my mood. The art of the tea ceremony is full of wisdom, empowering those who practise it.

There’s been a huge trend in the last few years towards learning more about popular philosophy and mindfulness, and going back to those ancient traditions that underpin such thinking. Why do you think this is so?

Mindfulness, meditation, Zen, yoga… As far back as I can remember, these activities’ popularity has come and gone. I don’t really know how different they are one from another – I think of them as alternative routes up the same mountain. Perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre and Plato were aiming for that summit as well? Japanese warlords of 400 years ago lived in an age of uncertainty. By making one wrong decision, they could lose their country, their family and their life. Their minds could not rest, even when they slept at night. The practice of the tea ceremony was conceived during that era, and just like today aimed to teach its devotees to ‘live for the moment, not for the future or the past.’ I think this must be an eternal goal for us human beings, weighed down with anxiety as we are all our lives. I think this is the reason we always return to those ancient philosophies and practices, in whatever form they may take in our particular era and however advanced the society in which we live.

Your honesty about your personal experience is a wonderful way of showing readers how they too can put into practice your measured approach to life. Do you think such openness and honesty is an important part of learning to be more mindful?

I have written several books to date, and have always taken a simple approach, writing my personal experiences with honesty. I think that’s because the starting point of my career was as a non-fiction writer. These days I write essays, but whatever I write, I do so from a journalistic viewpoint based on my life’s journey. This was especially true for THE WISDOM OF TEA, which is my individual story: the twenty-year-old girl who becomes a mature woman through twenty-five years of practising the tea ceremony. As such, it was important for me to be completely transparent with readers, to disclose my personal experiences as well. By opening myself up, I wanted my readers – who live with the various stresses of life too, of course – to sit in my tea room, to see what I see, to hear what I hear; to go on the same journey of the heart along with me. It is during those times of living in the moment that we are most open and true to ourselves. When I focus on making tea, I sometimes feel like I’m having a conversation in my mind with someone very close. Who is this person? One day, I suddenly realised that that person was me, my inner self – my true self.

If you could offer a single piece of advice as to how we may start living more mindfully in our fast-paced modern world, what would it be?

We live in a high-speed society where we’re constantly overloaded with information. Although there’s essential news to be found within that information, there are also plenty of unimportant things – including intentionally provocative and often unfounded opinions and rumours to inflame our anxiety. If we listen to all these unnecessary voices, we reduce the time available for listening to our true selves and so lose track of the realities of our own lives as individuals. I think we have a clear choice: either be carried away by the whirl of miscellaneous information, or instead listen to your own voice and live your own life.

Here’s a suggestion: Try, once a week, for a few hours, to switch off the TV and your smartphone, then completely detach yourself from the noise around you. Indulge yourself by doing whatever it is you enjoy, remaining conscious of the five senses. Some of my favourite things to do are digging for clams at a sandy beach and picking edible weeds in the field. For me, feeling a part of nature is the epitome of mindfulness. And of course the tea ceremony lessons I attend once a week are a mindful time for me, too.

Although it’s true that modern life moves at tremendous speed, we have only to look outside to slow it down: see spring flowers blossom, hear cicadas chirping in summer and insects buzzing in the autumn garden. The earth rotates on its axis as usual, and seasons pass without fail. When we remind ourselves of these facts, we’re able to feel the speed of modernity fade into the distance like it’s an illusion.

One editor friend told me she really enjoys the time she spends walking her dog in the park. The leash in her hand is tense, making her feel the excitement of her beloved dog heading for the grass. In such moments with her pet, she feels she’s rediscovered her real self.

But when we can’t go outside, there are other ways of practising mindfulness. Kneading clay or plasticine is a good example; any activity where you put your energy into creating something. During such times, it’s important to appreciate your capacity for sensory experience, paying attention to what you hear, what you feel, and what you remember as thoughts come to mind – these are perfect moments in which to restore your true life.

The Wisdom of Tea is out now.

‘Lot’ by Bryan Washington wins the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize

Lot by Bryan Washington has won this year’s £30,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.

Lot is a collection of short stories centring around a young man finding his place among family and community in Houston.

Chair of the judging panel Swansea University professor Dai Smith said of the collection:

“Bryan Washington’s collection of short stories does what all great fiction does, finds a style that can open up a world that is otherwise unknowable and he does it with wit and grace. It is a real voice, unique, unforgettable, generous, and warm and one which provides us with a sense of community and the full experience of life. As one of the judges said he has a country and western kickass voice.”

Washington said:

“It’s a gift whenever an audience gives you the time of day for a story, whatever that is, let alone to be acknowledged for your work on such a massive platform. And it’s an honour to tell stories about the communities that are dear to me, and the communities that I live among—marginalized communities, communities of colour, and queer communities of colour, specifically. So I’m thankful for the chance to share space with my fellow nominees, and I’m grateful for the support of my friends, and my family, and my chosen fam. My name’s on the award, but it belongs just as much to my Atlantic and Riverhead teams, my agent Danielle Bukowski, and everyone who’s given these stories their time.”