Author Archives: fcmalby

F. C. Malby is a novelist, poet and short fiction author. Her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle, won The People’s Book Awards. She is a contributor to four print anthologies, and her stories and poems have been widely published internationally online and in print.

And Other Stories Celebrates its 10th Anniversary

Independent Publisher, And Other Stories, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this autumn with a redesign as well as physical and digital events. They invite you share your book photos and videos with fellow readers using the hashtags #AndOtherShelves and #aos10, as well as tagging them on Instagram (@andotherpics), Twitter (@andothertweets), Facebook (@AndOtherStoriesBooks), YouTube (@andothervideos) and wherever else you hang out.

I’ve supported them for some time and have my name inside the covers as a previous subscriber. Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, reviewed here, is one of my favourite books. Their authors are bold and daring, with each book surprising the reader. I love the variety of styles and the different settings and cultures in which the stories are set. These are just a few that I own, but I have more scattered around the house in various places. I don’t like to be too far from a book! I love the cover designs, too.

Swimming Home

Founder and publisher Stefan Tobler says that the team will mark the milestone from September on into the new year with new designs, online events and in-person parties and bookshop displays. The publisher’s titles will get a different look from September onwards, thanks to new house-style typefaces as well as the appointment of an art director, designer Tom Etherington.

Reflecting on the early days of And Other Stories, Tobler says: “To be honest it feels like a minor miracle that the press started at all. I was a single parent, not living in London, and so not getting out all that much. I had never worked in publishing. It was amazing how ready with advice others in publishing were, like Pete Ayrton, and organisations such as Arts Council England.” He notes that while And Other Stories was something of a pioneer with its focus on translated writing and its subscription model when it began, in the last decade the landscape for both has changed a lot (The Bookseller, 23 July 2021).

And Other Stories publishes contemporary writing, including many translations. As a publisher, they aim to push people’s reading limits and to open up publishing so that, in their own words, “from the outside it doesn’t look like some posh freemasonry.” They believe that more of the English publishing industry should move out of London, Oxford and their environs. In 2017 And Other Stories moved their main office to Sheffield and recieved a warm welcome. The move helped them to discover great new writing from the North of England, including Tim Etchells’ Endland, Amy Arnold’s Slip of a Fish and Rachel Genn’s What You Could Have Won.

And Other Stories is made up of readers, editors, writers, translators and subscribers, with books distributed widely through bookshops, although they say that subscriber support is what makes the books happen. They now have about 1,500 active subscribers in over 40 countries, receiving up to 6 books a year. If you are interested in subscribing, click here.

Do you have any And Other Stories books? Let us know and share any snaps in the comments…

Short Story Reading

I will be reading one of my short stories at an online performance of positive stories and poems celebrating local and national environmental initiatives with Pens of the Earth next Wednesday 22nd, 7-9pm. Sign up at eventbrite

About this event

Pens of the Earth and spoken word troupe T’Articulation invite you to an online evening, via Zoom, of prose and poetry inspired by environmental initiatives. Come and hear writers perform work written in response to our various themes including fresh pieces written for our 2021 Small Differences Add Up theme. (Submission window closes 30th September.)

These stories and poems celebrate local environmentalism – bringing a message of hope and empowerment through imagined encounters, actions, events, and settings; increasing awareness of our surroundings, our connections, and our ability to effect change.

We are also delighted to welcome Jenni Jones, Sustrans Liveable Cities & Towns Officer for Portsmouth, as our guest speaker. ‘School Streets are coming to Portsmouth!‘ She’ll tell you more… 

Tickets to this event are free. However contributions to our Wilder Portsmouth fundraiser are greatly appreciated: donations will help seed change in the city, benefiting both people and wildlife.

The Zoom link will be emailed out to you the day before the performance. Please contact the organiser if you don’t receive it.

Holding on to Life, FC Malby, Spillwords Press

My flash fiction, Holding on to Life, has been published with Spillwords Press…

HOLDING ON TO LIFE

written by: FC Malby

@fcmalby

I imagined him to be tall and dark, my twin brother, when she told me; similar personality, more confidence. Ma told me she’d bled heavily when she carried me, thought she’d lost me, ‘till her stomach kept growing after the doctor ordered bedrest. Didn’t have scans in them days, she said. Aunt Connie had been drafted in to help. Then I arrived after what I’m told is the longest and worst labour, like it was somehow my fault, that I’d been difficult or might have been responsible for his loss. She looked startled in most of my fading baby photos — the ones in tartan albums, labeled in biro —like she’d birthed an alien. There was an awkward distance between us that looked nothing like Madonna and Child. Ma thought she’d told me once, but with most of her stories, I’d heard this one on numerous occasions by the time I carried my own bairns.

The constant, gnawing gap in my life, the longing, the loneliness, it had always been there. I found his face in a few male friends over the years, the ones that were silly and funny and kind. But, I lost him as time unfurled, wondered whether he might have been a doctor, like my Pops, or a vet, maybe a teacher. Sometimes I would reach out a hand to see if he caught it, or hear his voice in a stranger’s. I’d look at men my age and wonder what it would feel like to have him here in the flesh, if we’d fight the way siblings do. I imagined he’d be a better version of me. We look for better all the time. They tell us in school to do better, be better. Better… (continue reading at Spillwords Press).

Review: A Passage North, Anuk Arudpragasam

“The present, we assume is eternally before us, one of the few things in life from which we cannot be parted. It overwhelms us in the painful first moments of entry into the world, when it is still too new to be managed or negotiated, remains by our side during childhood and adolescence, in those years before the weight of memory and expectation…”

The opening lines of Anuk Arudpragasam’s stunning book, A Passage North, Longlisted for the Booker Prize, draws us into a world of post civil was Sri Lanka, capturing the suffering through Tamil narrator, Krishan. The story begins with a call to let him know that his grandmother’s former carer, Rani, has died unexpectedly. He is also grappled with a recent email from a lost love, Anjum, an activist he met in Delhi four years previously.

As Krishan journeys by train from Colombo to the Northern Province for the funeral, he begins a journey through his own soul. The story is beautifully written, with flowing sentences that weave the reader through his thoughts and longings. A Passage North is a memory of the lost, the missing and the dead, casting a light on the ravages of war through the eyes of Krishan, a PhD student, living in Delhi as he watches the news unfold in 2009.

The book is meditative, a stream of consciousness in some respects, and an illustration of the impact of the connections we make and how it affects the human psyche when they are lost. Inspiration for the rhythm and style of the book is taken from Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marias.

What struck me most, was Arudpragasam’s insight into the way that men can intimidate women through a gaze or certain body language…

“In Delhi and many of the Hindi-speaking states more generally male stares were different, were intensely unselfconscious and intensely unrelenting, so that even when you weren’t being harassed in more explicit verbal or physical ways you still had to use all of your psychological resources to resist these gazes in the course of each day, to prevent these men from trying to enter your soul through your eyes, like strangers who enter the privacy of your house without permission and without even bothering to take off their shoes.”

The sensitivity with which he tackles the subject of Anjun’s sexuality in a culturally oppressive environment, is both powerful and subtle.

I would liken the book in some ways to being lost inside a painting, a weaving of colours and shapes. If you enjoy literary fiction, I highly recommend this. It’s slow in pace, so don’t expect snappy twists and turns, but if you want a journey into Tamil culture and an insight into love and loss through the ravages of war, this won’t disappoint.

Arudpragasam is a bright, insightful writer, with much to share from his internal world. The sentences are sharply observed and intensely hypnotic. It will be interesting to see how it fares as the shortlist is put together. A compelling and thought-provoking read.