Nightjar Press

Russian around

nicholasroyle — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:06:54 +0000

Sorry about that headline. Couldn’t resist. But there is a Russian around. Ray Garraty has reviewed the new Nightjars here.

Nightjar Soup

nicholasroyle — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:15:41 +0000

If you are in the north-west of English next Thursday 24 November, you simply have to come to Nightjar Soup at the fabulous Continental pub, Preston, where you’ll also find the finest selection of bottled Belgian beers north of Antwerp. Come to think of it, even if you’re not in the north-west of England, come anyway.

New Nightjars reviewed

nicholasroyle — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:36:52 +0000

Christopher Kenworthy’s ‘Sullom Hill’ is reviewed on Sabotage, which also reviews GA Pickin’s ‘Remains’ here. Both titles are reviewed on Follow the Thread. And on the Black Glove.

Nightjar design

nicholasroyle — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:56:41 +0000

Posts to this blog are like London buses. They get stuck in traffic. Oh, you know what I mean. Nightjar Press is grateful to its brilliant and lovely designer, John Oakey. Without John’s excellent work, kindness and enthusiasm there would be no Nightjar Press. We – by which I mean I – am enormously grateful to him.

Autumn art

nicholasroyle — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:52:56 +0000

The paintings reproduced on the covers of the two latest chapbooks are by Julie Jones. Nightjar Press is very grateful to Julie for the use of her images.

New Nightjars

nicholasroyle — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:43:55 +0000

The two autumn 2011 hatchlings have now flown the nest. They are Christopher Kenworthy’s ‘Sullom Hill’ and GA Pickin’s ‘Remains’. Kenworthy is a British writer and film director, born in Preston in 1968, who has been living in Western Australia for a number of years. He is the author of two novels, The Winter Inside and The Quality of Light, and a short story collection, Will You Hold Me? In the early 1990s he ran the influential independent press Barrington Books. Pickin is a Californian who settled in the UK in 1976; she lives in Stranraer in Scotland where she sings and plays in a band, Luce Women, specialising in traditional music. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies. To order copies at £3 each plus 50p p&p, please email the publisher, Nicholas Royle.

Spring is here

nicholasroyle — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:19:44 +0000

The first two Nightjar chapbooks of 2011 will be launched on Monday 7 March at an event at Words on the Water Festival, Keswick. They are Lexicon by Christopher Burns (17pp) and Field by Tom Fletcher (12pp). Both Burns and Fletcher have strong links with West Cumbria – Burns lives in Whitehaven, while Fletcher grew up there before moving to Manchester – and both are now Quercus authors. Tom’s second novel, The Thing on the Shore, is due out from Quercus very soon, and Chris’s first novel since 1996′s Dust Raising will appear from the same publisher next year, entitled A Division of the Light.

To secure your copies of these two chapbooks – both limited to 200 signed, numbered copies – please drop me a quick email to nicholasroyle(at)mac.com with your order. Payment may be by cheque, made payable to Nicholas Royle (pls send to 38 Belfield Road, Manchester M20 6BH), £3.50 for one chapbook or £6.50 for two (incl p&p), or by direct bank transfer (details available on request). If you are an existing customer, I don’t need to receive payment before sending your order. Just confirm that your address has not changed and I will get them out to you without delay.

Whitehaven calling

nicholasroyle — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:10:05 +0000

In March 2011, Nightjar Press will publish two new chapbooks linked, tenuously, by geography. ‘Lexicon’ is a new short story by Christopher Burns (below), author of five novels including The Flint Bed, The Condition of Ice and Dust Raising. Burns’s first short story, ‘The Mummification of Princess Anne’, was published in an Arts Council anthology, New Stories 1, in 1976, having been selected, along with 38 other contributions by writers including Elizabeth Baines, Giles Gordon and Desmond Hogan, from 700 submissions. In the intervening years dozens of Burns’s stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and chapbooks. A collection, About the Body, was published by Secker & Warburg in 1988. Christopher Burns was born and brought up in west Cumbria; he lives in Whitehaven.

Accompanying ‘Lexicon’ will be a new story by Tom Fletcher (below left) entitled ‘Field’. Fletcher is the author of Lakeland-set The Leaping and a number of short stories, including ‘The Safe Children’, published as a Nightjar Press chapbook in 2009. His second novel, The Thing on the Shore, set in and around a call centre in Whitehaven, is due in February 2011 from Quercus. Although born in Worcester, Tom Fletcher was brought up in Whitehaven and lived there until recently, when he moved first to Yorkshire, to study creative writing, and then to Manchester.

Paul Magrs on Nightjar Press

nicholasroyle — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 08:19:05 +0000

Acclaimed novelist & short story writer and prolific blogger Paul Magrs has blogged about Nightjar Press. It’s customary at these moments to say one feels both humble and proud at the same time, but the truth is that Paul’s very generous write-up shows that he knows exactly what Nightjar Press is trying to do.

Nightjars take flight

nicholasroyle — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:09:24 +0000

Last night’s reading, ‘A Haunting of Nightjars’, featuring one Nightjar Press author and seven others who are operating more or less in the same sort of territory, seemed to be a big success. First to read was Terri Lucas.

Terri (left) has been writing seriously for about a year and has a poem coming up in Pantheon magazine. She read ‘In the Dark’, a short, sly take on a murder mystery weekend. It was Terri’s first public reading, but it won’t be her last. She was followed by Conrad Williams (below left), who read a haunting and beautifully lyrical story, ‘Other Skins’, from his collection Use Once Then Destroy.

After Conrad, Laura Ellen Joyce (below), who has published two excellent stories in Succour magazine, bravely read a new story she had written that afternoon.

And then was the turn of Stephen McGeagh (below left), reading from his novel of scally vampires in downbeat Manchester settings – the bus stop where kids look at you in a funny way, the Job Centre where there are no jobs, the pub where the bartender puts your money straight in his pocket.

Following which there was a break for people to make visits to the bar and the book table, which I didn’t take a picture of but should have done, because it was ‘manned’ by my wife Kate looking at her most pulchritudinous. I did remember to snap our next reader, Socrates Adams-Florou (below right), who told the story of the ‘Dead Bird’, hitting notes of absurdity and tenderness at the same time.

Our next reader was Claire Massey, editor of New Fairy Tales and author of a short story, ‘Chorden-under-Water’, which recently won the Manchester Oxfam short story competition. I was so absorbed in Claire’s story, ‘Feather Girls’, I forgot to grab a quick shot of her reading. I was equally gripped by Tom Fletcher’s extraordinarily unnerving ‘The Home’, but did remember to take a picture (below).

The final reader of the night was Graeme Shimmin (also below), who, discovering that his manuscript was incomplete, accessed his story, ‘Shared Expenses’, on his phone and read it from that, to the delight of a warmly receptive south Manchester crowd.

‘Shared Expenses’ is based on a true story, but Graeme’s version is entirely his own.

Thanks to all the readers and to the audience, as well as to the organisers of the Didsbury Arts Festival, of which this event was a part, and to our hosts at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club.