Since 2019 I have posted an annual diary on this website about my work, travels and events. One day I’ll write in depth about the role of touring, travel and the arts in my life and how it feeds and enhances my writing. I do keep an ongoing diary on Instagram covering similar ground, but offering some insights.
WRITING?
Yes, always – but I never talk about my major projects until they’re ready to be announced offically.
MR LOVERMAN
The highlight of 2024 was undoubtedly the adaptation of my novel Mr Loverman into an 8-part BBC One television drama produced by Fable Pictures, with the screenplay by Nathaniel Price – starring Lennie James, Sharon D. Clarke, Ariyon Bakare, Tamara Lawrence, Sharlene Whyte and Tahj Miles wth unforgettable star turns by several actors. There were various screenings & discussions which I took part in including at BAFTA and the BFI. It’s the first television adaptation of any of my books and it’s everything I want it to be – capturing the soul and spirit of the novel – and more. I absolutely love it! Broadcast in the autumn, it received fantastic critical and audience responses including an incredible 100% perfect score on the review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes. In December it also made many ‘Best of Year’ lists in the media. As always, big thanx to my editor, Simon Prosser, at Hamish Hamilton-Penguin UK, for publishing me since 2001 and publishing this novel in 2013. It will also soon be available with my US publisher, Grove Atlantic. Click on link for a full list of creatives and to watch it on BBC iPlayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0023h93/mr-loverman.
(BAFTA screening inc. Hong Khaou – Director (left) and Sharon D. Clarke)
Jodie-Simone Howe (Costume Designer), Nathaniel Price (Screenwriter), Christogher Melgram (Production Designer)
Barry! (Lennie James) & Morris! (Ariyon Bakare)
TOURING
Less touring in 2024, having completed about 40 international trips in the past three years, mainly at the invitation of festivals. It’s hard for me to say no but I had to simply because while travelling is important to me, I also have to write, and it’s harder to do so while on the road. Highlights include visiting Nubia in southern Egypt with my Rolex mentee, Ayesha Harruna Attah, as research for her new novel. It was my third trip to Egypt (the first time was in 1986) but my first to Nubia. (Recommend Elephantine Island.) Our Rolex partnership enabled Ayesha and I to meet in several countries from 2023-2024 as part of our mentoring project: Trinidad, Greece, Switzerland, Senegal, Egypt and the UK inc. the Edinburgh Festival. Huge thanx to Rolex for the Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, which has now come to an end after over 20 years of setting up international mentoring partnershops in various art forms. Another highlight was travelling (with my husband) in a Grand Suite from Venice to Paris, via Austria and Switzerland, on the Venice Simplon Orient Express – for a writing commission – TBA. (I still can’t get over having our own private toilet and shower in the suite, and a personal butler on call. It’s very corrupting..:)) I was also in Kenya for the NBO Litfest, with Hay Festival, in Senegal for Rolex, in Germany three times for the Cologne Literature Festival, the Resonanzen Festival founded and curated by the writer Sharon Dodua Ottoo and in Berlin running a seminar for black women writers.
(Resonanzen Seminar Berlin)
INTERVIEWING & BEING INTERVIEWED
Every year I interview a number of writers. This year it was Diane Abbott, Shani Akilah, Malorie Blackman, Marlon James, Paul Murray, and Caleb Azumah Nelson. And I was interviewed for Guardian Live Events by the novelist Okechukwu Nzelu about Mr Loverman, by Lucy Siegle for The Circle – the global feminist organisation founded by Annie Lennox and Livia Firth. (Please support them.) and Isabela Noronha in Megafauna, Sao Paulo, Brazil. I was also in conversation with David Olusogu at the NBO Litfest in Nairobi, with Claudia Rankine at the Emirates Litfest, Dubai; Elif Shafak at the Queen’s Reading Room Festival, Hampton Court; Jason Okundaye at Tottenham Literary Festival; Michael Pederson at Edinburgh Futures; Ayesha and Irenosen Okojie at the London Library for Rolex; Conceciao Evaristo at FLUP, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (a BIG DEAL was made of Evaristo talking to Evaristo! People have been raving to me about Conceciao, one of Brazil’s most famous writers, for decades!).
(Feat: Malorie Blackman, Lucy Siegle, Neneh Cherry, Marlon James, Okechukwu Nzelu, Claudia Rankine & Nathalie Handal, Diane Abbott, Ayesha and Irenosen Okojie, Shani Akilah, Elif Shafak, Michael Pederson, David Olusoga, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Conceicao Evaristo, Vanley Burke, Joy Gregory, Jason Okundaye and with my Brazilian editor, Alice Sant’Anna and the novelist Isabela Noronha in Sao Paulo.)
TEACHING
As Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University of London (now part of the University of London Federation), I teach the ‘How to Write a Novel’ module on the Creative Writing MA, starting the academic year 2025-2026. You can study full-time or part-time and most students work while studying. I also supervise PhDs. Open for applications!
KEYNOTES
I delivered the keynote for the Shining Lights Photography Symposium, curated by Joy Gregory, at the Victoria & Albert Museum; the keynote for the Rezonanzen Festival in Germany, and at LSO St Lukes, London, the Annual Sir Thomas Gresham Lecture: The Stories we Make Up & the Stories that Make Us.
(with the photographers Vanley Burke & Joy Gregory)
Resonanzen Festival, German. Sharon Dodua Otto (left)
COMMUNITY
Every once in a while I set up a new literature intitiative. In 2024, I founded a new prize in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature called the RSL Scriptorium Awards, offering ten talented writers a year, a writing retreat in my new cottage on the Kent coast in Ramsgate, which they will have for themselves, for free. The prize will be competitive and open for submissions March 2025. My quote for the press release. “Many writers don’t have a dedicated writing room to themselves, and there might be financial or family demands that are challenges to completing writing projects. Some of the most important writers might not be commercially successful but they are absolutely culturally essential and instrumental in moving the arts and society forwards. Yet literature receives the least public funding out of all the art forms and most writers earn very little, which is no reflection on the quality of their writing. As a society, we need to build a more supportive infrastructure to help writers from every background thrive, and in so doing, keep literature, in all its life-enhancing manifestations, alive.”
This is a philanthropic project for me, not, therefore, a money-making venture. Quite the opposite as I am part-funding it. Sadly, very sadly, this has to be spelled out…
PRIZE JURIES
Chaired the inaugural Nero Gold Prize, a partnership with Brunel University of London which went to Paul Murray for his outstanding novel, The Bee Sting. I also chaired the inaugural Global Black Women’s Manuscript Prize, founded by Cassava Republic publishers, won by Cherise Morris, whose powerful winning manuscript will be published by the press in 2025. Lastly, I was a judge on the Royal Academy of Art’s Sunny Dupree Award for a Woman Artist, one of their Summer Exhibition prizes, won by Cathy de Monchaux’s for her artwork, Cauldron.
HONOURS
Deeply appreciative of the following honours: a Fair Saturday Award from the Fair Saturday Foundation, Bilbao, Spain, awarded at the Guggenheim Museum; the Praeses Elit Award, from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; and I made the UK Black Powerlist 100 for a 4th consecutive year. I was also featured as one of ‘100 Black Women Who Have Made Their Mark‘, a project founded by the Serendity Institute and which involves a touring exhibition of the 100 commissioned portraits, along with a catalogue of all the portraits.
(At Leicester Gallery – some of the 100 women featured: Brenda Emmanus, Hilary Carty, Carole Lemming, Cathy Tyson, Stella Kanu)
(With artist Valerie Asiimwe Amani)
MEDIA
I turn down most media requests, including many from the national news and current affairs programmes. I’ll resurface later down the line.
THE ARTS
Theatre beckoned me to see thirty-three shows this year (gulp!). I just did a count in my diary! Highlights include The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre; The Picture of Dorian Gray at Theatre Royal Haymarket; Standing at the Sky’s Edge at the Gillian Lynne Theatre; The Years and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof both at the Almeida; Death of England x 2 of 3 productions; White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (starring Julie Hesmondhalgh) at Soho Theatre; Othello at the Globe, and Slave Play at the Noel Coward Theatre. I also finally got to attend a Cirque du Soleil peformance (Allegria: In a New Light) at the Royal Albert Hall, which was so awe-inspiring, I returned to see it again with my husband.
As a frequent visitor of art galleries, some of the highlights this year were The Time is Always Now curated by Ekow Eshun at the National Portrait Gallery, Entangled Pasts curated by Dorothy Price at the Royal Academy of Arts, the eponymous Zanele Muholi at Tate Modern, curated by Carine Harmand. (I also saw it when it first exhibited there in 2020, cut short by Covid.) And I loved The 80s: Photographing Britain at Tate Britain, curated by Yasufumi Nakamori. Other trips included the amazing Venice Biennale, Musee Picasso Paris (go see!) and Pinacoteco in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in an exhibition featuring historical and contemporary artists.
I also go to the cinema and watch other art forms such as music and dance.
ROSE BRUFORD COLLEGE
My four year tenure as President of my beloved first alma mater, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, came to an end this autumn, and I handed the baton over to fellow alum and great actor, Ray Fearon.
(The mace-bearer extraordinaire is Raymi Ortuste Quiroga, Head of First Year Drama.
Check the new mace designed & crafted by Alistair Angus, a graduate of Scenic Arts 2024 at the College.)(Featured with the comedian Mo Gilligan, who received an Honorary Fellowship, Ray Fearon and the college Principal, Randall Whittaker.)
SMALLER PIECES OF WRITINGS
I wrote the introduction to the 10th anniversary edition of A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (One World). I also wrote a Comment is Free piece on the attacks agains the Royal Society of Literature when it kicked off in February, and an essay about the writing of Mr Loverman, both for the Guardian; as well as an essay on gossip for British Vogue.
ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE
Lastly, in 2024, I continued as President of the Royal Society of Literature, a four year appointment that ends at the end of 2025. The RSL, now 204 years old, has fully embraced the twenty-first century as a modern and progressive organisation. It carries out an impressive array of projects celebrating and furthering the cause of literature, setting up many public events and education projects every year, managing and generating over twelve literature prizes, working in partnership with many arts organisations to promote literature and broaden its audiences, and rewarding a broader range of brilliant writers with Fellowship.
Facts:
My role as President is that of figurehead, which means that I am not involved in managing or adminstering the organisation, or the decision-making process, I have never attended a meeting of the trustees as President (and indeed, did not know I could do so until a month ago. I mean, who reads byelaws?), nor do I have any more than one vote in the Fellowship elections. The RSL appoints a number of Fellows every year, a lifetime honour, with a total of approximately 700 Fellows in the Fellowship at any one time. The annual election process for appointing new Fellows involves approximately thirty-five Fellows who can vote. The RSL is a very selective organisation rewarding writers on merit. Standards have been maintained, of course. Without going into detail, the RSL has shown immense resilience, sense of purpose and dignity this year, and it will continue to thrive as an important champion of excellent writers and literature.
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