The opening of Ten Square Miles - my artist collective's exhibition - took place on Saturday evening and it was a blast. See here for pics. We took the Battle of Aughrim as our jumping off point so there was lots of fodder in that.
I wrote prose this year - an imagined monologue by the wife of a farmer who was co-opted into fighting on the Jacobite side. I had to make it up from scratch as I couldn't find any testimonials from women.
Speaking of women, can you all please recommend some well-written recent novels by women to me? I am hungry for good, contemporary novels and I am especially interested in what women are writing. I'd be grateful. I flicked through a load of uninspired first pages of novels in the library the other day and came away with a book of short stories. Which is grand except I really want to be reading novels just now. HELP!?!
EDIT: ORANGE PRIZE LONGLIST ANNOUNCED TODAY (maybe I should start here):
- Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) - Sudanese; 3rd Novel
- Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (Canongate) - British; 10th Novel
- Room by Emma Donoghue (Picador) - Irish; 7th Novel
- The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi (Bloomsbury) - Indian; 1st Novel
- Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty (Faber and Faber) - British; 6th Novel
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Corsair) - American; 4th Novel
- The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Bloomsbury) - British/Sierra Leonean; 2nd Novel
- The London Train by Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape) - British; 4th Novel
- Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson (Sceptre) - British; 1st Novel
- The Seas by Samantha Hunt (Corsair) - American; 1st Novel
- The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna (Faber and Faber) - British; 2nd Novel
- Great House by Nicole Krauss (Viking) - American; 3rd Novel
- The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone (Chatto & Windus) - American; 3rd Novel
- The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) - Serbian/American; 1st Novel
- The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Viking) - American; 1st Novel
- Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile (Serpent's Tail) - British; 1st Novel
- Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Chatto & Windus) - American; 1st Novel
- The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin (Serpent's Tail) - British/Nigerian; 1st Novel
- The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (Harper Press) - British; 4th Novel
- Annabel by Kathleen Winter (Jonathan Cape) - Canadian; 1st Novel
