The Lancashire Writing Hub Bookshop is a great place to buy publications by North West writers.

Browse the list and email Jane at writing@theyeatculture.org or phone 01772 499207 to place orders.

All orders will be dispatched within 24 hours of receiving payment, subject to stock.

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Word Soup: Year One.

This neat anthology is the first full publication of the Lancashire Writing Hub, and features work from some of the best of the poets and prose writers who featured in Word Soup Live Literature nights during the first year of the Hub.

Reviewers have said that Word Soup: Year One is ‘a book that offers a wealth of talent from the North West.’

The individual poems and short stories in the anthology have been described as ‘beautiful’, ‘philosophical’, ‘unnerving’, ‘heart wrenching’, ‘surreal’, ‘illuminating’, ‘atmospheric’, ‘vibrant’, ‘honest and endearing’, ‘gripping’, ‘intelligent and redolent’.

Featured writers are Nicholas Royle, Sarah Hymas, Norman Hadley, Peter Wild, Mollie Baxter, Sandy Calico, A. J. Duggan, Socrates Adams, Rachel McGladdery, Tom Fletcher, and J. A. Brunning, and their work is complimented by ‘intriguing and visually poignant’ extracts from a photodocumentary by photographer Garry Cook.

Word Soup: Year One  £3.50 incl p&p: writing@theyeatculture.org

They Eat Culture Print, Preston (2010)

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A Kind of Intimacy – Jenn Ashworth.

A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth is a fabulous read with a deliciously sinister central character and a creeping sense of menace.

‘Annie is morbidly obese, lonely and hopeful. She narrates her own increasingly bizarre attempts to ingratiate herself with her new neighbours, learn from past mistakes and achieve a “”certain kind of intimacy”" with the boy next door. Though Annie struggles to repress a murky history of violence, secrets and sexual mishaps her past is never too far behind her, finally shattering her denial in a compelling and bloody climax. A quirky and darkly comic debut – giving readers a glimpse of a clumsy young woman who has too much in common with the rest of us to be written off as a monster.’

A Kind of Intimacy was included in the Waterstone’s New Voices promotion and short-listed for Sam Jordison’s Not The Booker Award at The Guardian in 2009. In 2010 it won a Betty Trask award from the Society of Authors. Jenn Ashworth’s website is here: http://jennashworth.co.uk/blog/

A Kind of Intimacy  -  £11.99   writing@theyeatculture.org

Arcadia Books Ltd, London (2009)

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Morecambe Bay and Local Poets

Morecambe Bay and Local Poets edited by Graham Austin is a slim volume filled with poetry inspired by the Morecambe Bay area of North Lancashire. Reviewed as a collection of poems in which “many of the poems are inspired by the scenery, several reflect some of the more humanistic elements which have occurred historically and more recently”, this collection has been termed ”passionate works” which ”evoke images of the windswept, wild and often unpredictable seascapes that can be found there. ”

Each sale of the anthology gives donations to three very worthy and highly appropriate charities: The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, The North West Air Ambulance and Bay Search and Rescue; an excellent bonus reason to purchase. 

The contributing writers in the anthology are  Graham Austin,  Chris Kelly,  Mark Carson,  Angela Christopher,  Jennifer Copley,  Jean Cowgill,  Neil Curry,  Duncan Darbishire,  Kate Davis,  John Hindle,  Alison Jenner, and  Maggie Norton.

 Morecambe Bay and Local Poets  £5.00 incl p&p  writing@theyeatculture.org

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Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth – Peter Wild (ed)

Published by Harper Collins: “For more than twenty-five years, the antimelodic “noise” of Sonic Youth has assaulted us, exhilarated us, inspired us. Why?

“Katherine Dunn says it’s because they operate in the foggy world between the real and the surreal. Mary Gaitskill says that Sonic Youth caught her, years ago, when she was falling. J. Robert Lennon says it’s because Sonic Youth rip it apart. Emily Maguire was hooked because once she was in love with chaos.

“Their sound is caustic, elemental, nihilistic—and quite unlike any other cult band ever to achieve rock godhood. In Noise, twenty-one great literary voices offer short fiction based on or inspired by songs from Sonic Youth—a raucous coupling of music and literature featuring marrow-colored goo, severed hands and abandoned babies, Patty Hearst watching the apocalypse on TV, and other unruly images of the Zeitgeist. ”

Contributors: Hiag Akmakjian • Christopher Coake • Katherine Dunn • Mary Gaitskill • Rebecca Godfrey • Laird Hunt • Shelley Jackson • J. Robert Lennon • Samuel Ligon • Emily Maguire • Tom McCarthy • Scott Mebus • Eileen Myles • Catherine O’Flynn • Emily Carter Roiphe • Kevin Sampsell • Steven Sherrill • Matt Thorne • Rachel Trezise • Jess Walter • Peter Wild

Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth - £8.99 writing@theyeatculture.org

Harper Collins (2009)

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Scars Beneath The Skin – A. J. Duggan

You see them on the news, staggering towards the camera, the innocent caught up in any conflict. Bewildered, covered in blood. But what happens years later, long after the headlines have faded into obscurity?   

Karl Dresner is one such victim, ‘Scars Beneath The Skin’ is his story.  

Scars Beneath the Skin has been termed ‎”Reminiscent of the dark, desperate underworld Graham Greene often portrays”.

You can read a review of Scars Beneath the Skin here and find out more about A. J. Duggan at www.ajduggan.co.uk

Scars Beneath the Skin  - £8.99   writing@theyeatculture.org

Flambard Press, Newcastle Upon Tyne (2009)

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The Bird Room – Chris Killen

The Bird Room is ‘A blackly comic tale of awkward young love’. The Guardian

‘Killen creates something memorable out of his everyday ingredients. Clever time shifts keep the reader on their toes, there are many darkly funny observations about contemporary urban life and his spare, powerful prose brilliantly captures the loneliness of cities and the agonies of love.’  Lottie Moggach, London Paper

‘The Bird Room is a hall of mirrors . . . sparely written, cool, jaunty, darkly comic, with a sharp ear for voice and manner . . . it displays exuberant brio.’ Steve Davies, Guardian

Find out more about Chris Killen here http://dayofmoustaches.blogspot.com/ .

The Bird Room  – £9.99   writing@theyeatculture.org

Canongate Books, Edinburgh (2009)

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The Director’s Cut – Nicholas Royle

A body wrapped in coils of celluloid is discovered on a demolition site where, fifteen years earlier, four aspiring young directors had made an underground film of a man’s suicide.

As a murder enquiry is opened, which of the four now has something to hide from his former associates? Harry Foxx, the frustrated arthouse director, whose only feature didn’t so much get released as manage to escape; Frank, who gave up film-making to become a critic; Richard Charnock, who as a director achieved some commercial success, with a string of sexploitation quickies, and an equal measure of critical derision; or Angelo, lowly film dispatch clerk, who hears voices in static and is embarked on a lonely, obsessive search for the Museum of Lost Cinema Spaces

‘A blindingly ingenious thriller, rich in atmosphere and imbued with a deep love and knowledge of cinema. There’s a command of narrative and a wealth of ideas here that most of today’s writers could only dream of. A real breakthrough novel, not just for Nicholas Royle but for any readers who feel that contemporary fiction has gone stale and lost the plot.’     Jonathan Coe

For more information, see Nicholas Royle’s website.

The Director’s Cut  -  £6.99   writing@theyeatculture.org

Abacus (2000)

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The Flash – Peter Wild (ed)

A Flash fiction anthology with all proceeds going to Amnesty International. 

Contributors include:

“Gina Ochsner, Patrick Neate, Patricia Duncker, J Robert Lennon, Susan Elderkin, Niall Griffiths, Shiromi Pinto, Sam Lipsyte, Emily Maguire, Rick Moody, Clare Dudman, Willy Vlautin, Sara Gran, Percival Everett, Rebbecca Ray, Damon Galgut, Kate Pullinger, Dermot Bolger, Aimee Bender, Jonathan Lethem & 80 other writers!”

Click here for info about Peter Wild    

& for more about Peter Wild, see The Short Review

The Flash  -  £8.99    writing@theyeatculture.org

Social disease UK (2007)

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The Raw Shark Texts – Steven Hall

The Raw Shark Texts caused a stir even before the book was released. The Independent sums it up nicely:

“The pre-publication excitement about Steven Hall’s debut novel The Raw Shark Texts is a familiar story. Translation rights sold to a huge number of territories, four major film studios fighting to make it into a movie, even (it is rumoured) personal phone calls to Hall from Hollywood actresses. Two things make it unusual. First, the book justifies the hype; and, secondly, it’s almost impossible to imagine how anyone (even Charlie Kaufman) could turn this mind-scrambler into a Hollywood blockbuster…  The Raw Shark Texts is, for once, a novel that genuinely isn’t like anything you have ever read before…”    Matt Thorne – The Independent

Follow the link for more about Steven Hall

The Raw Shark Texts  -  £7.99   writing@theyeatculture.org

Canongate Books (2007)

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