Highlights from the Triskele Lit Fest

When the Triskele Books' one day Lit Fest came to a close in September, we knew that the conversations generated across the five panels were far too good not to share with a wider audience.

Thanks to sponsorship from Matador Books and sound engineering expertise from Live Box (who overcame some significant challenges in the form of noise intrusion from dance classes in the room above) we were able to record the panels and upload the videos to our YouTube channel.

Here are some of the highlights from the day, which we hope will tempt you to delve into the videos to watch the discussions in full.

Sci Fi and Fantasy

We kicked off the day with a lively discussion with Sci Fi and Fantasy authors Felicia Yap, CS Wilde, Jeff Norton, Eliza Green and Yen Ooi, chaired by Jack Wedgbury from Matador.

The panel showcased the vast range of modern Sci Fi and Fantasy. Felicia's upcoming Yesterday is a thriller about a murder being investigated in a world where most people only remember yesterday. CS Wilde's A Courtroom of Ashes is a fantasy about a lawyer in hell. Jeff Norton's MetaWars explores what happens when humans retreat from the real world into a digital one. Eliza Green's Becoming Human imagines humans competing for resources with another race on a distant planet, while Yen Ooi's Sun; Queens of Earth harnesses the powers of dreams to provide energy.

Between them, they reveal their inspiration and discuss how SFF liberates them to explore big themes from what it means to be human to the destruction of the Earth, but to view them through a personal perspective.

What do an oyster card, an iPod, a set of Bose headphones, a paintbrush and a passport reveal about their writing processes?

Romance

In the second panel of the day, Triskele's Liza Perrat talked to Romance writers Isabel Wolff, Charlie Maclean, Sareeta Domingo and Carol Cooper.

Isabel is an accidental novelist who began her fiction career when a newspaper column about the singles scene was turned into a novel. She has since written ten more novels.  Charlie Maclean's Unforgettable is a 'Sliding Doors' type story that explores the consequences of asking someone on a date ... or not. Sareeta Domingo's The Nearness of You, about a young woman falling in love with her best friend's boyfriend, also examines themes of bereavement and depression. Carol Cooper's multi-stranded narratives follow an array of couples at different stages in their lives.

They explore how far a Romance novel can play with the RWA's definition of "a narrative centred around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make their relationship work." They consider the role of sex in a romance novel - does it have a place in moving the plot forward and revealing character, or should the author keep the bedroom door closed? When men write Romance, does it get 'elevated' into a different category? What happens when you try writing in the dark?

And a pocket watch, a photograph, some music and a bottle of bathroom cleaner reveal surprising secrets about their writing process.

(With apologies for the poor quality of sound in the audience segments on this video)

Crime and Thrillers

Next, Ben Cameron of Cameron PR talked to Crime and Thriller authors Kate Hamer, Adam Croft and Chris Longmuir.

Kate Hamer's The Girl in the Red Coat is a dual narrative about a mother and her lost child. Adam Croft's Her Last Tomorrow is also centres round a missing child, but in this case the father receives a ransom note with an impossible demand. Chris Longmuir's Devil's Porridge is a historical crime novel based around the first policewomen in Scotland, guarding a munitions factory during WWI.

They contrast the challenges of the different types of stories they tell, reveal the horrible secret of what Devil's Porridge really was, explore the new concept of Grip Lit, and explain how a bottle of perfume, a literary award and the scan of one's unborn child continue to inspire their writing.

The empty seat at the end of the row belongs to Nigerian author Leye Adenle, who was prevented from getting to the Lit Fest on the day. Catriona Troth caught up with him a few weeks later and you can read her interview with him here. 

Historical Fiction

In the last genre based panel of the day, four very different authors discuss Historical fiction with fellow author Jane Davis.

Orna Ross's Her Secret Rose is a fictional account of the real life lovers WB Yeats and Maud Gonne. Radhika Swarup's Where the River Parts looks at the largest displacement of people in human history, following the Partition of India, through the eyes of a young Hindu woman. JD Smith's Overlord series takes us all the way back to 3rd Century Syria and the life of Zenobia, the warrior queen who nearly toppled the Roman Empire. Alison Morton's Roma Nova series is an alternative history in which the Roman Empire survived into the 20th Century.

The four authors reveal why the chose their particular stories to tell, the different challenges and responsibilities of writing history from the recent and distant pasts, how to create a voice appropriate for a different time period , and the discovery that surprised them most in the course of writing their books

And an index card, a bracelet, 'the only book I have ever defaced' and a photograph of a Roman gladius reveal secrets about their writing process.

Preserving the Unicorn - conversations with literary authors and their editors.

The last panel of the day was a discussion with literary authors and their editors, chaired by Triskele's Catriona Troth. Sunny Singh discusses her novel, Hotel Arcadia, and the fascinating role her Dutch translator played in honing the manuscript. Alex Pheby and his editor from Galley Beggar Press, Sam Jordison, discuss his novel, Playthings, the fictionalised story of Daniel Schreber, of one of Freud's most celebrated case studies. And Rohan Quine and his editor Dan Holloway take the lid off the process of editing Rohan's latest novel, Beasts of Electra Drive.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Sunny reveals inspirations ranging from Dante's Inferno to Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Alex  explains how his novel grew out of frustration with blinkered 20th C analysis of Scheber. Sam  describes how he absorbed the emotional impact of the book and imagined telling a reviewer, "I've got this book and it's going to destroy you," before deciding "of course we've got to publish it."  And Rohan describes his book  as a 'love bite to the world,'  while Dan calls it 'a beautiful spectacle compiled of horror.'

Part way through the conversation, Alex Pheby threw a provocation to the audience. "All forms of masculine activity are vile and pernicious and should be weeded out." Sadly, time ran out before the implications of this could be explored. After the event, though, Orna Ross came up with some great questions for Alex. We hope to get the chance to put those questions to him in the new year. If so, we will publish his responses in Words with Jam.

Lagos Lady - exploring the fictional world of Nigerian Author, Leye Adenle

Leye Adenle, author of the crime thriller Easy Motion Tourist, should have been with us at the Triskele Lit Fest in September.

Unfortunately, his journey across London became entangled with a major demonstration and he never made it. We were determined not to miss out on the chance to interview the author of this fascinating and moving novel, set in Lagos amongst sex workers and slum dwellers.

The book has done particularly well in France where, published as Lagos Lady, it won this year’s prestigious Prix Marianne.

Here Catriona Troth talks to him about his path to becoming a novelist, his inspiration for Easy Motion Tourist, and where he is taking his characters next.

Hi Leye. Can we start by talking about your route to becoming an author?

Like most writers, I’ve always written. Starting on the back of school exercise books. I have so many stories I didn’t complete. In fact, I tried to write my first novel when I was still in primary school.

My grandfather [Oba Adeleye Adenle] was a writer. I have uncles and aunts who are writers. And my father, though he was a medical doctor, also had a publishing press. He had an extensive library – half medical books and the other half, everything! Maybe it’s because there were very few TV stations, growing up in Africa, books were our entertainment. From a very early age, when I asked my parents something – you knew they knew the answer, but they wouldn’t tell you. The answer was always “look it up in a book.”

So I have always been interested in books and stories, and in telling stories. But even though I kept starting novels, I never managed to finish one.

One day, I was talking with my mother and two my brothers. When we get together, we talk about everything. My mum is particularly interested women’s issues. She was director general for women’s affairs in Oyo state. So the subject came up of women’s mutilated bodies left naked by the side of the road. Left there, untouched, for god knows how long, until they were bloated. No one claimed the bodies. No one investigated. Because the bodies were naked, everyone assumed they were prostitutes. And because they were mutilated, people thought black magic was involved.

So from that discussion, and from thinking about how these women could be protected, suddenly, I had the idea for a story.

I went home that evening, wrote the first chapter and posted it up on Facebook. I went to sleep and forgot about it. And the next day it had loads of comments from people wanted to know what happened next. So I continued writing a chapter every day, and posting it on Facebook, until the entire story was done. Never missed a day. People were sending me Friend requests just so they could read the story.

I remember going to a friend’s house, when I was still posting chapters of the book up on Facebook, and he was talking to me about the character Amaka as if she was someone we knew. “How can you do this to Amaka? Amaka would never...” Then I knew I was really on to something. That was what made me think I should turn this into a book.  

Ben Cameron (chair of the Crime Fiction panel at TLF16) and I both loved character of Amaka, the organiser of Street Samaritans, who tries and protect the vulnerable girls who are dragged into prostitution.

I’ve had a fantastic response to Amaka. She’s based on a friend of mine. Someone I lost touched with many years ago. But not someone protecting the sex workers. There is no one doing that, as as far as I know. I wish there was.
Amaka is a reflection of many other women I have known, too. People ask me why I make my female characters so strong. It’s a bizarre question. I always answer, truthfully, “I don’t know any other kind of women.” 

At the heart of Easy Motion Tourist is a profound compassion for the sex workers trapped in a life where selling their bodies is the only alternative to destitution. Ben Cameron said, “What I really liked was that it seemed to be about humanising and dehumanising the sex-workers – if the are dehumanised, turned into mere objects then anyone could abuse them at will, while if people are reminded that they are human that obviously becomes harder.” You have a story about an encounter you had with sex worker in Lagos, when she was humanised for you.

People think this is why I started to write this book, which isn’t true. But this woman did become one of the characters in the book.

I was on a trip to Lagos with another guy, to set a business there. One night my friend told me he wanted to go out for some cigarettes, by which I knew he meant ‘I want to go clubbing.’ We ended up on a road which is really the red light district of Lagos. As we got out of the car, I was very conscious that there were prostitutes all around us. It wasn’t a world I was familiar with, or comfortable in. I don’t think I had any prejudice against these women. I didn’t think of them as ‘dirty.’ It was more like ‘You do your thing. I am not going to judge you. But there is a wall separating us and I want it to stay there.’

But this one woman was really persistent. She followed me and touched my arm, and I was really shocked. I shook her off and said “Don’t touch me.” But then I looked into her face and I could see she was really pained by the way I treated her. She said, “But you did not have to say it like that.” That really stuck with me. That moment of connection when she became a real human being just trying to survive.

I wanted to give my readers the same experience, the same sense of empathy with another human being.

That’s also why I try not to have any ‘walk-on’ characters. Everyone in the book should be a real person. Even the bad characters have a reason for being bad. Life has dealt them a bad hand. Everyone their own story.

The Easy Motion Tourist of the title is Guy Collins, a British journalist who goes to Nigeria to cover elections for an obscure cable channel. One his first night in Lagos, he stumbles on the murder and mutilation of a young woman. Why did you choose an outsider rather than a Nigerian as your narrator?

Guy is not the main character in the book. Amaka is. But having Guy as a narrator meant that I could legitimately look at Lagos as an outsider does, notice things that a Lagosian would never notice. Guy, as a foreigner, is perfect for bringing Lagos alive. His experience of Lagos changes in the course of the book. Guy is afraid of Lagos, he recoils from it, then he starts to love it. So it’s a way into the city for the reader.

This is maybe a tricky question, but Easy Motion Tourist paints a pretty bleak picture of Nigeria – do you worry about the danger of feeding into Western narrative of a dysfunctional Africa?

I didn’t think I was painting a bleak picture of Nigeria. I was painting an honest one! Not one Lagosian has said to me, “How dare you show Lagos like this?”

And you have to remember this is a crime novel. If you judged New York by the movies, you’d be afraid to walk down the street.

Or if you judge Edinburgh by reading Ian Rankin?

Exactly!

So where next with your writing?

If you’ve read Easy Motion Tourist, you know that it ends on a cliffhanger. Actually, I wrote a third book before the first one came out, but that one picks up again a year later. My publisher told me, "You can’t do that! You have to resolve the cliffhanger."

So the second book starts pretty much where the first one leaves off. It’s a political thriller this time, about corruption, and it’s set in a world of power and affluence, rather than in the Lagosian slums. Amaka is in it, but not Guy. Guy is back in London. But in book 3, Guy will be coming back to Lagos.

Some people thought I would keep writing about the street girls. That I would become the ‘voice of the sex workers’ – but is that fair on these people? That’s exploitation! That’s me exploiting them for gain.

And does the second book have a title yet?

Easy Motion Tourist is taken from the title of a song by King Sunny Adé. So I’ve taken the title of the second book, When Trouble Sleeps, from a lyric by another Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti.

I can’t wait to read it! Thank you, Leye.


You can read my review of Easy Motion Tourist on Book Muse UK here.Easy Motion Tourist is published in the UK by Cassava Republic, and in France by Métailié Noir ( (as Lagos Lady, translated by David Fauquemberg) It will be published in Spanish in 2017. When Trouble Sleeps will be published by Cassava Republic in 2017.

Leye Adenle is also the author of Chronicles of a Runs Girl, a fictional blog in the voice of a Lagos prostitute, written after Easy Motion Tourist was finished but before it came out as a book, and originally published online anonymously.


The Crime and Thrillers panel from the 2016 Triskele Lit Fest is on YouTube here.

TLF - The Triskele Lit Fest!

Saturday 17 September sees the very first Triskele Lit Fest!

This is a litfest with a difference. We set out with five aims:

• trade and indie authors together on the same platform
• literary fiction on an equal footing with other genres
• BAME authors talking about their books, not about diversity
• speakers paid an appearance fee
• admission free and accessible to all booklovers 

After a tremendous amount of hard work by Catriona Troth, TLF Administrator, plus the generosity of our sponsors, it's actually happening.

From 1pm-6pm, we have panels of authors to talk about their genre. Sci-fi and Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction, Crime and Thrillers, and Preserving the Unicorn.

In parallel, we have our trademark pop-up bookshop, where forty different writers will be available to interact with readers, sign books, talk about their work and make new friends.
 

And we've ticked every box.

• A near 50:50 mix of trade and indie authors, not talking about routes to publication.
• BAME authors like Radhika Swarup, Leye Adenle, Sareeta Domingo, Yen Ooi and Sunny Singh, talking about their books, not diversity.
• Our literary panel – Preserving the Unicorn – brings together literary authors and their editors to discuss working on a manuscript that defies the 'rules' of storytelling.
• And yes, we are paying our speakers and admission for readers is free.

Triskele Books is all about building bridges.
Words with JAM is a source of ideas and information for writers.
Bookmuse provides reviews and recommendations for readers.
The first Triskele LitFest offers something for everyone.

We know it’s far more important to build bridges than to erect barriers.
Seems people agree - here's an extract from our Tuesday #twitchat #bridgesnotbarriers