Cinnamon Press blog

Not long now until the much anticipated launch of Ashley Lloyd Smith's debut novel, Pizza with Jimbob & Twoforks, at Derby Waterstone's on 1 October — "amazement" is promised(!), so it's a launch not to be missed.

We're really excited to be launching our new web site, with huge thanks to Sarah Willans of Zipfish.

As a writer and a publisher, it seems self-evident that I should be on social media. Yet recently, I've been questioning this.

Thank you to everyone who entered the 2018 pamphlet competition.

As something of a follow-up to last September's blog — and to (gently ☺) remind you it's on its way, Maria Jastrzębska has posted an interesting article on her upcoming book, The True Story of Cowboy Hat & Ingénue, which will be out in October but can be pre-ordered now.

Ahead of the official launch of The Cinnamon Review of Short Fiction in Paris at the end of the month, here's an extract from Tamsin Hopkins' fascinating and revealing article in the Review investigating her approach to writing short fiction…

Ahead of the publication of Undressing Stone, author Hazel Manuel gives an insight into the novel's editing.

Don't forget poet David Batten will be launching his second full poetry collection, Untergang at Kyffin Café on Friday, 11 May. Fiona & Gorwel Owen will be on hand to give a few songs and Dave will be reading with some bloke called Adam Craig, whose latest novel is apparently In Dreams the Minotaur Appears Last ☺ I'm looking forward to the next T. Lobsang Rampa, myself … hem-hem.

We're very excited to announce that our very own David Mark Williams (author of The Odd Sock Exchange), has won the Hedgehog Press inaugural "Slim Volume of One’s Own" Collection Competition 2018.

This as been a big, ambitious undertaking, in eight sections through the past year, with a big response to read and consider. But we're proud to announce that the results are now in — hearty congratulations to the following writers, who have been chosen to appear in the forthcoming special, limited edition pamphlet Wheel of the Year:

Guest blog by Jay Whittaker.

Thank you to everyone who entered the Debut Poetry Collection Prize this year. We had a very strong long list — congratulations to everyone who made it on to it — which was narrowed down to ten excellent entries from eight poets (2 submitted two entries that were each strong). The short list was:

At Cinnamon Press we love books. We adore poetry and fiction, literature that defies genre and books that take risks. We find writers with distinctive voices who have something real to say exciting to work with. So what would make an independent press in love with words and story declare we don't want good books?

We were extremely sorry to hear that Landeg White passed away in the early hours of Sunday, 3 December. Born in South Wales in 1940, Landeg was a gifted writer, academic, novelist and poet, who published two of his novels with Cinnamon Press, most recently Ultimatum, which will be launched in February.

The twice-yearly writing courses at Ty'n y Coed, near Conwy, has become a firm fixture in the Cinnamon calendar. This November's autumn course was fantastic example of why the courses are so important to our ethos: eight writers coming together to find support and inspiration, each of them making a breakthrough with the work and leaving with a stronger commitment to writing than they had are the start of the week. But don't take my word for it. Here's Diane Woodrow's take on her time at Ty'n y Coed this November.

The notion that you are here for some purpose; that all you have to do is discover the one thing hidden deep in the recesses of your soul or psyche in order to fulfil your life's goal or nature or some other externally determined objective, is a pervasive one. An Internet search will bring up many and various ways to discover your purpose with the assumption that there is an esoteric 'very reason why you exist', more colloquially 'what you were put on earth for'. Yet not only are these supposedly deeply-embedded purposes hard to find, most of them seem to be described in sweeping statements so general as to become meaningless. Things like being here 'to bring peace' or 'radiate light'.

Hard to imagine two more different people than Alfred Kubin and Eric Basso. Kubin: print maker, illustrator of the works of Poe and E.T.A. Hoffmann, sometime associate of the Blaue Reiter. Basso a novelist, poet, playwright and critic, a modernist in the best sense of the term, a man located far off the mainstream. Yet, they've both offered visions of societies collapsing under the grip of plagues of sleeping sickness. In Kubin's 1908 novel, The Other Side (quoted above), the sickness gradually overruns the city of Perl, a strange, failing utopia located outside customary space and time. In Basso's 1977 cult classic, The Beak Doctor, the sickness has already consumed an unnamed town whose deserted streets are choked by swirling fog and which teeters on the verge of collapse:

It's never easy judging a competition and this year's entrants to the Debut Novel Prize were a particularly knotty group to unpick. But, at last, we managed to decide on a 15 strong long list to go over — and over — to arrive at the final short list of:

I've attended 4 book events in 4 countries in the last ten days and although each one has been completely different from the next, they've all been excellent experiences. From the launch of Landeg White's Ultimatum in iconic Lisbon bookshop, Ler Devagar, to an upstairs room in a pub in the Welsh border town of Presteigne, where myself and Susan Richardson read from several of our poetry collections; from an art-space café/bar in Edinburgh for the launch of Jay Whittaker's debut collection, Wristwatch, to the cosy and well-stocked Drake's bookshop for the launch of the second in Tracey Iceton's Celtic Colours Trilogy, Herself Alone in Orange Rain, there were key ingredients that meant the audiences were delighted, moved and engaged. And books were sold. So what is the magic list that makes a book event work?