SOUTH WEST READING PASSPORT
Transcript of SOUTH WEST READING PASSPORT
IIIII www.readingpassport.org
Welcome to the South West Reading Passport
2014, the third year of this exciting reading
adventure. For 2014 we have selected four
‘Worlds’ to relect diferent genres of literature.
The challenge is to read three or more novels
from these Worlds before the end of December.
Featured writers will be appearing at some libraries
in the South West. If you are unable to see them,
don’t worry – there are special features about the
writers on our website www.readingpassport.org
For this year’s competition, pick up the review
sheets with this Passport, or enter reviews online.
Your local library and the Reading Passport
website have even more reading suggestions to
inspire you, to wax lyrical, be passionate, look
to the future and delve into the dark with your
reading.
The Reading Passport is a partnership between
Arts Council England, Literature Works, Royal
Literary Fund and libraries across all sectors in the
South West.
SOUTH WESTREADING PASSPORT
Take a risk – explore new worlds and encounter
exciting writers.
Take this reading adventure and expand your
horizons.
World of DarknessMeet the world of horror
and evil, if you dare.
Lyrical WorldsDiscover the engaging
and brilliant world of poetry.
World of PassionInlame your imagination
with these passionate and
afecting novels.
Future WorldsWhat challenges may lie ahead for
Earth? See how diferent authors
envision the world of the future.
Adam NevillAdam Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in
1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand.
He is the author of the supernatural horror novels
Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, The
Ritual, Last Days, House of Small Shadows, and
No One Gets Out Alive.
In 2012 The Ritual was the winner of The August
Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, and in 2013
Last Days won the same award. The same two
novels won the RUSA Reading Lists Award in the
Horror Category.
Described in The Guardian as “Britain’s answer
to Stephen King”, Adam Nevill is now one of our
most important and admired horror writers.
Adam lives in Devon.
www.adamlgnevill.com
F E A T U R E D W R I T E R
Tan
ia G
lyd
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Michel Faber has written the highly acclaimed
The Crimson Petal and the White, The Fahrenheit
Twins and the Whitbread shortlisted novel Under
the Skin. The Apple, based on characters in The
Crimson Petal and the White, was published in
2006. Born in Holland, brought up in Australia, he
now lives in the Scottish Highlands. For a scary
and disturbing read try Under the Skin.
Andrew Taylor is a British author best known
for his dark crime novels. These include the
Lydmouth series, the Roth Trilogy and historical
novels such as the best-selling The American
Boy. His accolades include the Diamond Dagger,
Britain’s top crime-writing award. Andrew and
his family have lived for many years in Coleford
in the Forest of Dean. His books make macabre
reading. Try The Anatomy of Ghosts or Bleeding
Heart Square.
Brian Lumley is an English horror-iction
writer. Born in County Durham, he joined the
British Army’s Royal Military Police and wrote
stories in his spare time before retiring and
becoming a professional writer. Lumley served as
president of the Horror Writers Association from
1996 to 1997. In March 2010 Lumley was awarded
the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror
Writers Association. He also received a World
Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2010.
He lives in Devon. His vampire series, Necroscope,
has been translated into ten languages and sold
over a million copies worldwide.
Enter the world of the macabre and unexplained
with these excellent writers. They will make you
want to sleep with the light on.
All libraries have further booklists. Please ask a
member of staf and enjoy your reading adventure.
Or look online at www.readingpassport.orgIIIII www.readingpassport.org
Patrick GalePatrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight in 1962,
raised in Winchester, where he studied at the
Pilgrims choir school and Winchester College, and
went on to read English at New College Oxford.
He lives on his husband’s farm near Land’s End
and is a keen gardener and cellist.
He has written fourteen novels, including the
bestselling Rough Music and Notes from an
Exhibition. His fourteenth novel, A Perfectly Good
Man, won a Green Carnation award and was a
favourite recommendation among The Guardian
readers in the paper’s end of year round-up. His
two collections of short stories are Dangerous
Pleasures and Gentleman’s Relish. His next novel,
A Place Called Winter is published by Tinder Press
in March 2015 and he is currently writing a three
part original, gay-themed drama called Man in an
Orange Shirt for BBC2.
www.galewarning.org
F E A T U R E D W R I T E R
Dan
iel H
all
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Sarah Challis has lived in Scotland and
California but is now happily settled in a Dorset
village with three rescued dogs and three chickens.
She is married with four sons. She has written 10
novels including Jumping to Conclusions and That
Summer Afair. Her latest is called The Lonely Desert.
Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë The Brontë sisters began to write at an early age.
They had a volume of poetry published in 1846,
and their novels began appearing the following
year. Try Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering
Heights or Anne’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
John FowlesFowles lived in Lyme Regis, the setting for his most
famous novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman,
for most of his life. His interest in the town’s local
history resulted in his appointment as curator of
the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he
illed for a decade. He was named by The Times
as one of the 50 greatest British writers since
1945. Other novels include The Collector and
The Magus.
Don’t think of yourself as the passionate type?
Think again and take up the challenge to read
some of literature’s most compelling books.
Further booklists are available on your library
website and on www.readingpassport.org 24/7.
IIIII www.readingpassport.org
Julia CopusJulia Copus is an award-winning poet and
children’s writer. Her debut collection, The
Shuttered Eye, appeared from Bloodaxe in 1995.
In 2012, Faber published her third collection, The
World’s Two Smallest Humans, which was short-
listed for both the Costa poetry award and the
T.S. Eliot Prize. Other awards include irst prize in
the National Poetry Competition and the Forward
Prize for best single poem (2010).
Julia’s radio work includes an afternoon play,
Eenie Meenie Macka Racka, which won the BBC’s
Alfred Bradley award, and Ghost Lines, a cycle
of poems and biographical interludes about the
experience of IVF, which was short-listed for the
2012 Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry.
She is currently working on a biography of the
poet Charlotte Mew.
Julia lives in Somerset.
www.faber.co.uk/catalog/author/julia-copus
F E A T U R E D W R I T E R
Caro
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Fo
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Benjamin Zephaniah is a Rastafarian writer
and dub poet. He is a well-known igure in
contemporary English literature and was included
in The Times list of Britain’s top 50 post-war writers
in 2008. Zephaniah has said his mission is to take
poetry everywhere and to popularise poetry by
reaching people who do not read books. Try We
are Britain.
Carol Ann Dufy, CBE, FRSL is the irst
female, Poet Laureate in the role’s 400 year history.
She has been praised for her combination of
tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism,
unconventional attitudes and conventional forms.
These have won her a wide audience. Her work
as Poet Laureate includes poems on the MPs
expenses scandal and the deaths of the last two
British soldiers to ight in the First World War. Read
Rapture published in 2005.
Seamus Heaney is widely recognised as one
of the major poets of the twentieth century. A
native of Northern Ireland, he was raised in County
Derry and later for many years lived in Dublin. He
published over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism,
and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.
Works include Opened Ground: Selected Poems,
Electric Light and District and Circle.
Contemporary poetry is one of the most varied areas of literature today. Ask at your library about joining a local poetry group or start one of your own.
There is a dedicated website for the Reading Passport with more poetry suggestions produced by the Poet Laureate for Bournemouth, James Manlow. www.readingpassport.org
IIIII www.readingpassport.org
Gareth L PowellGareth L. Powell is an award-winning science
iction and fantasy author from Bristol. He is the
author of ive novels, including Ack-Ack Macaque,
which won the 2013 BSFA Award for Best Novel.
Gareth’s short stories have appeared in numerous
anthologies and magazines, including six in
Interzone, and he has received several ‘honourable
mentions’ in Gardner Dozois’s Best New SF
collections. In 2007, one of his short stories came
top of the Interzone annual readers’ poll for best
short story of the year.
He has also co-written a novelette with Aliette de
Bodard, and given guest lectures on creative writing
at Bath Spa University. He has written articles for
The Irish Times, SFX, SF Signal, Mass Movement
Magazine, and Acoustic Magazine, and, in 2012,
he achieved a boyhood ambition when he was
given the chance to pen a strip for Britain’s long-
running sci-i and fantasy comic, 2000 AD.
www.garethlpowell.com
F E A T U R E D W R I T E R
Be
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ow
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IIIII www.readingpassport.org
Margaret AtwoodAlthough Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed Oryx and
Crake and award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale
are often described as sci-i, the author herself
prefers to call them “speculative iction”, or even
“adventure romance”. However you classify them,
these dark visions of the near-future will certainly
give you plenty to think about.
Iain M BanksBest-selling novelist Iain Banks leapt from this
world to another whole ictional universe, the
Culture, simply by slipping an “M” into his name.
In the process, as The Guardian noted, he wrote
books which conirm him “as the standard by
which the rest of SF is judged”.
Alastair ReynoldsThe Welsh writer has studied physics and
astronomy and has worked in space research
too, using his background to write “hard” science
iction, based irmly on the realities of science as
we currently understand them. Scientiic realism
is no limit to the imagination though – Reynolds
writes epic and dramatic “space opera”.
If you thought Science Fiction was just about
spaceships and robots, think again! Travelling
through space and time opens up endless
reading possibilities – parallel universes,
dystopian futures and Brave New Worlds are just
waiting to be discovered. Spaceships and robots
too, of course...
Why not try:
There are loads of exciting sci-i titles on
the shelves of your local library, or see the
booklists at www.readingpassport.org for other
interesting suggestions.
IIIII www.readingpassport.org
Win Books!Review at least 3 books drawn from 3 diferent Worlds online at www.readingpassport.org or take the reviews to your local library to be entered into a prize draw for a £150 book gift card and other prizes.
Your reviews may be displayed in libraries and on the
website. Competition closing date 30th December 2014.
Terms and Conditions of the competition are at your
local library and online. Competition open to library
members. Join your local library for free.
The Reading Passport project is supported by the public
libraries of the 15 Local Authorities, Read South West, and
regional partners and SWRLS members in the South West.
www.swrls.org.uk
www.literatureworks.org.uk