Five Leaves News
Five Leaves’ writer Nicola Monaghan wins the 2008 Nottingham Creative Business Awards for Writing and Publishing
The short-list comprised Five Leaves, Nicola Monaghan (who is published by Five Leaves!) and playwright Stephen Lowe, no stranger to the firm or our summer Lowdham Book Festival. Beaten by our own writer!
The recent death of our writer Harold Rosen has been followed by that of Duncan Glen. Duncan edited Akros and was a major publisher of Scottish poetry. Duncan spent many years in Nottingham, at what is now Nottingham Trent University, and contributed to our Poetry: the Nottingham collection.
In 1999 Five Leaves published his Harold Rosen’s “Are You Still Circumcised?”. I can’t remember now whether it was Harold himself who approached me about the book or his son Michael, but I do know we rushed through the book to ensure it was launched at Harold’s 80th birthday party. Memory tells me that we rushed through the book in three weeks, which might have been possible, and it showed. Fortunately the first print run sold out quickly and we reprinted, tidying away a few mistakes. The Times Educational Supplement’s review helped… “for anyone who has used language or been a child”. And the TES was right. Harold’s book was a magical revisiting of his Jewish – and Communist – East End upbringing. This was not new territory, but Harold made it seem so. The book ended with an outstanding short story of an officer visiting a museum in Germany after the war. Unfortunately the book is now out of print. I’d agreed with Betty Rosen, Harold’s second wife, that if Harold made 90 in the summer of next year we would bring out a new edition. Not to be. Harold was great fun to deal with. We argued about the Yiddish slang in the book – he wanted it as he remembered it, his “kitchen Yiddish”, I wanted “klal” Yiddish. The equivalent of BBC English. Some years later we published a small pamphlet of his poems – Chose Your Frog, which is still available – a meditation on a Jewish youth encountering the world of nature. Harold was primarily known, however, as a socialist educationalist and an activist in the education world. He was also a fine storyteller.
…to Sibyl Ruth (author of “I Could Become that Woman”) for winning the Mslexia poetry competition – one of the serious comps out there – with her “A Song of Jean”. Sibyl is now £1,000 better off. Among the runners up was our Berta Freistadt whose “Flood Warning” was also published by published by Five Leaves.
We are pleased to have been involved with the celebrations marking Alan Sillitoe being given the Freedom of the City of Nottingham, to coincide with his 80th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the great Nottingham novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Allan contributed a short story to the Five Leaves’ collection City of Crime, some poems to our Poetry: the Nottingham Collection. The title of our anthology of the new generation of Nottingham fiction writers, Sunday Night and Monday Morning was a direct homage to Sillitoe’s work. The last event of these celebrations is on 12th November – see the events listings.
Our Crime Express imprint has signed up a raft of crime writers for books over the next year – Ray Banks and Lawrence Block (from the USA) have books out in November Allan Guthrie and Jane Adams in early spring.
We will also be launching a full length crime series, Five Leaves Crime, in November The first books are by Carl Tighe, from Derby and Manchester, and Russel McLean from Dundee. Carl has written several books before, but not crime, but this will be Russel's first book, and the whole of Dundee seems to be waiting on the book. Dundee Waterstone’s have ordered 125 copies. Could it be because Russel is the crime buyer at that shop???
We are also editing a book by first time writer Rod Madocks, an enormous book set in the world of secure hospitals. Rod spent ten years writing the novel, which landed on our desk at 160,000 words. It is now down to 114,000 words and falling, and looking good. Five Leaves is very excited by this book - No Way to Say Goodbye - and you'll be hearing more of it later. Stephan Collishaw has joined our list, or, rather, will with his next novel.