Right now, we’re looking for writers to participate. You can learn more here, which leads to a downloadable application. Deadline is 10 June, and you need to be based in greater Portsmouth. It’ll be an amazing journey and we’re looking forward to it hugely.

Prose is the poor cousin to poetry when it comes to live presentation and performance. Sure, there are some prose writers who are naturally gifted performers; there are others, like Jon McGregor and Edmund de Waal, who are inclined to do more interesting things with their audiences than the standard author reading allows for.

But for the most part, ‘live literature’ still means poetry or poetry-derived performance or installation. And that’s a challenge for all the short story writers, novelists, essayists, memoirists, and non-fiction writers who are keen to break out of the stand-and-deliver (from behind a lectern) mould.

At Friday’s event, which was delivered Open Space style, I had some great discussions about the ways that prose might find a more comfortable home on the live lit scene. They boiled down to two ideas: 1) Work with prose writers to better understand the parameters of what live lit audiences expect, which is something fresh, lively and exciting, and; 2) Work with live lit producers and venues to expand their thinking around what might constitute a ‘live lit’ event. Particularly for the kind of work we undertake through ReAuthoring, this would necessarily mean moving away from the stage-and-mic platform that frames much of the live lit scene.

Point number 3 is probably that we need more opportunities like the one afforded Friday to talk, in a generous yet unvarnished way, about innovation when it comes to literary presentation and performance. The potential prize is a variety of new audiences, both for ‘live lit’ and for prose writing. That is something that all of us have a stake in making happen.

– Greg

Binet describes his book as a ‘non-fiction novel’. But what distinguishes HHhH from, say, Wolf Hall is that Binet constantly interrupts the narrative by saying, ‘That bit I just wrote? Not really sure how much of it is true.’ You’d think this would get annoying and occasionally it does, as other reviews have noted. But what HHhH does do very effectively – and, crucially, without diminishing its narrative drive – is to lay bare the impossibility of ever recreating the past with accuracy. There is always filler; there’re things we can’t know and must assume or posit or, yes, make up.

Who better to examine the delicate, often flawed tools by which we construct our collective backstory than Philippe Sands, author of the amazing Torture Team and someone whose career is all about dynamiting the official version of events in search of something more closely resembling the truth? At the start of the talk, Sands declared that he’d read HHhH in its original French and in English; he’s also an expert on the Nuremburg trials and thus swam in the same historical pool as Binet. For his part, Binet was genial and clearly ready to chat, both in English and French.

What could possibly go wrong?

On the surface, nothing. It was all very chatty and congenial. If you’d read the book, you’d conclude that Binet is gregarious and enthusiastic; if you’d not read it, you’d conclude that HHhH is about the attempted assassination of the Nazi horror show that was Reinhard Heydrich, written by someone with a bit of an obsession with the topic. You might want to buy it. You might also want to buy Sands’s upcoming book – something about the children of Nazis – which he flogged more than once.

All fairly standard fare for events like this one. And yet I wonder, what kind of engagement with ‘literature’ did this really represent? The questions, whether from the audience or Sands, didn’t reveal any new layers. This is a particular challenge with a book like HHhH, where the author’s motivations, processes and anxieties – standard questioning fare for bookfests like JBW – are an active and essential part of the book itself. If you’d read HHhH, the event was merely repetitive; if not, it might well have been deeply confusing.

How much more exciting it might have been if someone had thought to create an event that used the thematic threads of the book itself as a direct way to engage the bookfest audience? It was held in a nice black boxy space: opened up and rearranged, there might have ensued something more interactive that didn’t regurgitate the book but instead unpicked it in challenging ways. We are all historic constructs, comprised of interlocking stories, characters, timelines, events and motivations…what is fact, what is fiction, what exists in the grey zone in between? Why does this matter? What can we learn?

Sadly, big book festivals like JBW are largely about facilitated hero-worship. I understand the appeal from an author’s POV; who doesn’t like to be told again and again how much they are loved? But audiences for such events are self-defining, and self-limiting, which came through loud and clear based on a casual observation of the JBW demographic, i.e., 50+, middle class +, white (and for JBW, naturally, heavily Jewish).

I think we need a kind of meta-book festival. Something that actively subverts assumptions about books, writers, readers and the most of all the structure of book festivals themselves: experimental interactive literary performance installation theatre, perhaps. Not a new thought, but one that I did manage to make some notes about amidst the set-piece promo on Sunday’s stage. Well, at least that’s something for my £9.50.

– Greg

First, a mystery (starter sentence in boldface):

He was silent. She couldn’t help but talk.

And the echoes grew between them. Others noticed a tension; they shifted in their seats, eyes averted.

…apart from Helen who drew in closer, listening to every word the woman spoke. She knew her from somewhere, but didn’t want to remember.

Their words died of a sudden, a candle abruptly snuffed out.

The silence thickened as if it were physically congealing in the air around them, all of them, suffocating.

And then, a song:

The revelers were sated but longed for more.

They knew what to sing, but couldn’t read the score. Henry tried to teach them, but he was such a bore.

And still they kept on coming. Until a single, ready note was all they could hear.

It made them think of the blue of a still ocean.

The differing lengths of these two pieces reflects the randomised nature of the exercise: some pages were picked up more often than others. Much depends on the skill and confidence of the writers, and we’ve been consistently lucky with that.

While echoing renga and flash fiction, this is also a kind of collaborative free write. Each of the writers participating can use any element of what’s been offered – words, sentences, ideas, structures – as the starting point for work of their own. This is important to ReAuthoring, and to the writers we’ve worked with: not only having an opportunity to play in collaboration with other writers, but also exploring new methods to generate new points of entry for writing. Whatever else it might be, it’s a lot of fun!

– Greg

But it wouldn’t have been a ReAuthoring gig without a bit of writerly play, in this case a random story-generating exercise that made its debut on the day. Starting with six related sentences, writers blindly exchanged single-sentence responses either to the initial prompt or to what others responded with. The idea is that any offering should be able to slot together sensibly with any other to form a unique short story. It’s a bit renga, a bit flash fiction, but in its genre-straddling and physicality–pieces of story were literally flying all over Sarah’s lovely sitting room–all ReAuthoring.

Here’s one decidedly romantic result; others were wistful, violent, or surreal. We’ll post more in coming days. Enjoy, comment, or create one of your own!

There was a scent of spring in Tunbridge Wells. Flowers and bread and the steaming, salt smell of sunlight on pavement. 

In a synaesthetic stupor, she tripped and fell from the kerb. A young man stepped forward and caught her in his arms, releasing an odour of apples. She knew him but couldn’t say why; he looked at her blankly, anticipating a response she wasn’t prepared to offer.

“Is this spring ours?” he asked.

– Greg

The kind, we posit, that knows there’s a time to blog and a time to think.

And think.

And think some more.

Which is what we’ve been doing. Last year for us was a whirlwind of doing, from Lounge on the Farm to LV21 to Home Grown and many points in between. We had a bit of money to work with, scrabbled together a bit more along the way, and with the many wonderful writers we encountered managed to make some cool stuff happen.

But all that do-ing took a toll, not least in the area of actual planning ahead. And so, of late we’ve been wrestling with the big Qs. What is ReAuthoring? What are we adding to universe of literary development? What could we be, should we be…and should we be at all? Yes, to the latter part of the latter question. Yes, we still believe that writers need new ways of exploring and offering their work. Yes, there are new audiences to be had for innovative literary presentation. Yes, we’re still excited about taking a lead role therein.

We’ve put some big things in motion in the past month or so, the results of which won’t be known until the weather turns friendlier and the days grow a bit longer. We’ve not done with the thinking, of course, but we recognise that all think and no play makes ReAuthoring a bit dull. We’ve got plans to play. Oh, do we ever.

So, this is a bit of a placeholder. Stay tuned. Keep in touch. Don’t be a stranger. Etcetera. To writers who’ve worked with us so far, don’t be shy about offering ideas, however wacky or undeveloped: we’re going to attack our producing role a bit harder in coming months. There’ll be new training/development offers, too, though we can’t say more at present. We’ll also be networking quite a bit, and that means you’ll see ReAuthoring faces at more festivals and confabs. Come and say hello. We’re friendly, if prone to being a bit gabby. But you knew that.

– Greg

Home Grown sees Sarah filling four of Canterbury’s public gardens with her writing.

In Solley’s Orchard, there will be a harvest of poetry.

In Greyfriars, there will be an invitation to become a hermit.

In Westgate, there will be signs of a change.

And in Dane John Gardens, there will be a chance to hear the voices of those who have passed through, past and present.

Come and see us across Canterbury, on 8th and 9th September 2012.

Here’s a chance to read the monologues from Dane John Gardens:

“A good night’s sleep…”

“Free as a bird…“

“Give me a minute…”

“Hello, come and sit down next to me…“

“My name is Mary Parson…”

“I’m terrified…“

“This is Henry Court…”

“June 2nd, 1942“

“My name is Gertrude Ellis…”

“Oh no, not here…“

Enjoy the wistful sounds of the accordion as you climb on board and be prepared to journey to the very bowels of the ship in this interactive promenade performance.

Each piece has been specifically adapted to make full use of us of the strange and wonderful spaces in what will be an exciting and definitely unique event.

Performances start at 1pm and 3pm or come and meet the writers throughout the day from 11am to 5pm.

Location: LV21, Gillingham Pier, Pier Approach Road, Gillingham, Kent ME7 1RX – click here for directions.

Visited this event and want to take part in our evaluation? Click here.

On Wednesday 25th July 2012, six authors will take residence in the shops, cafes and bars of Whitstable to offer a fresh take on storytelling.

Each author has been challenged to work with the business to develop a performance that will appeal to existing customers and entice new ones.

Sarah Butler will be in the Duke of Cumberland, telling a mysterious tale about the flood that devastated Whitstable in 1287 (3pm-7pm).

Neil Baker will be in Oxford Street Books writing on-the-spot flash stories and other literary morsels, inspired by the customers and the books they browse (3pm-5.30pm).

Sonia Overall will be in Buzz 4 Wool, armed with scissors, pins and pens to create a cut-up text in the shop. She invites you to contribute words to the patchwork, view some stories and take away a literary snippet (3pm-8pm).

William Sutton and Kay Syrad will be in Deco 5, offering an evening of Victorian intrigue (6pm-8.30pm).

Chris Tinniswood will be sharing a Proustian tale – including madeleines – at The Windy Stores.

There will also be an informal gathering at Deco 5 from 8pm, offering a chance to meet the authors and producers of this event, and to catch some of Will and Kay’s performances – all are welcome.

All performances are free and no booking is required.

Please note: the performances don’t all happen at the same time – here’s a visual timeline (click for larger image).

And here’s a map to show the location of all the performances:

View ReAuthoring Whitstable Oyster Festival 2012 in a larger map