Getting by in Tligolian: an interview with Roppotucha Greenberg

Today we are celebrating publication of Getting by in Tligolian – a clever and beguiling novel in flash about life, love, language and time, by Roppotucha Greenberg. Laura Besley, flash fiction writer and author of 100neHundred, caught up with Roppotucha to ask about her writing process:

Roppotucha Greenberg and Laura Besley

Laura: Firstly, congratulations on the publication of Getting by in Tligolian – it’s a fantastic novella! Often, while I’m reading – whether it be a novel, novella or one of the various forms of short fiction – I find myself wondering what sparked the story. Was there a moment or a character or an image or something entirely different that led you to write Getting by in Tligolian?

Roppotucha: Thank you so much. Yes, it was the image of that city: those huge glass enclosures, the traffic, and the narrow streets with tired looking shops, and the river. The giant as well. His presence was almost instantly apparent in my imagination.

Laura: There are various strands to this novella, one of which use ‘language’. In the story, ‘Appendix’, the main character states: ‘I tried to learn Tligolian so many times and forgot it just as many.’ Did you purposefully use language, or the lack of language, to disorientate her and set her up as ‘an outsider’?

Roppotucha: I think she would be an outsider regardless of the language. Apart from the physical fact of immigration, her chronic naiveté both protects her and isolates her from the world. Through learning Tligolian, which is not necessary for communication in Tligol, she attempts to ground herself in the world. Language learning makes things seem simple, especially in the beginning when one talks of girls eating apples and your mother being a teacher and things like that. Of course, this does not work, because language turns into layers of forgetting, while its difficult tenses wrap around her and make her confusion grow.

Laura: The main character describes Tligol, the fictional city in which the novella is set, as ‘so beautiful, I convinced myself that I was in charge of the perfect expression of its beauty.’ Do you feel the city functions as a character within the novella and if so, how did you go about conjuring that feeling?

Roppotucha: Thank you for citing this line. In a way Jenny spends the whole book chasing the city, trying to express its beauty, learn its language, find its giant, take the trains to all its time layers. The city is a character. Like other places in real life, it is alive and wonderful, but it also evades easy capture. One comes near, but only just near enough, and being in the midst of the thing you want to capture complicates matters.

Laura: Another aspect of the novella is ‘time’. Did you layer in that complexity through multiple versions and/or edits, or was that aspect of the novella clear in your mind from the outset?

Roppotucha: That was something that became apparent very soon, in one of the early drafts. Time- travelling trains are an inherent part of the city. Though other aspects of the city became apparent earlier – the way its spaces are not quite stable, for example, or the way living people get recorded as ‘reflections’.

Laura: All of the chapters are short, some only a few lines. Was this a conscious choice? What is the effect of this on the reader? And what benefits do you feel you gain as a writer by learning to write/writing concisely?

Roppotucha: Yes, this was a conscious choice, but it was motivated by the needs of the story. I think novella in flash is a genre that works well for fragmented narratives and stories that work with negative space – in the sense that narrative gaps are part of the story. Without giving away too much, I feel that the form of the text works well with its ending…

Getting by in Tligolian by Roppotucha Greenberg is out today! Read the first chapter now and buy a copy from our webshop.

Roppotucha Greenberg has lived in Russia, Israel and now Ireland; she speaks three languages fluently and has tried to learn six more. She has previously published a flash and micro-fiction collection Zglevians on the Move (TwistiT Press, 2019) and three silly-but-wise doodle books for humans, Creatures Give Advice (2019) , Creatures Give Advice Again and it’s warmer now (2019) and Creatures Set Forth (2020) and Cooking with Humans (2022). Arachne Press has published Roppotucha’s stories in Solstice Shorts Festival anthologies Noon, and Time and Tide.

Laura Besley is the author of 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. She has been widely published in online journals, print journals and anthologies, including Best Small Fictions (2021). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best Micro Fiction and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Leicester. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea.

100neHundred is available from our webshop in paperback and audiobook. Listen to a story below.

 

Menopause: The Anthology Advance copies have arrived

We have office stock for Menopause: the Anthology! These are mainly going to authors, endorsers and reviewers, (If you are a reviewer and this appeals to you, give us a shout)

We are taking pre-orders for October now!

Gorgeous cover by Kate Charlesworth.

A wild and wonderful mix of poems and short fiction edited by Catherine Pestano and Cherry Potts

Is the menopause really all about hot flushes, empty nests and HRT? Forty-three writers challenge the clichés in poetry and short fiction.

This anthology will be published on Menopause Day, 18th October 2023. When, we have decided, all (post)menopausal women should celebrate their last period, since we never actually know when it happened. Memorial or celebration, you choose, but we will be having cake. Put the date in your diary!

ISBNs: Print 978-1-913665-85-2 100pp £9.99
eBook: 978-1-913665-86-9 £4.00

By turns furious, funny, passionate, elegant, eloquent, sometimes all of these things at once, but always intimate and incisive, this is an amazing collection from a wonderfully diverse range of voices. It absolutely exemplifies what the arts can do to communicate personal experience in a highly political and socially impactful way. I LOVED IT!


Joanna Brewis, Professor at The Open University and menopause at work researcher

Utterly relatable and so, so clever! I love the combination of humour, sadness, anger and strength that shines through the writings of these talented women.


Jackie Lynch, The Happy Menopause nutritionist, author & podcaster

 

This is such an important book. The menopause should not be just a vanilla-sisters, posh white woman conversation. It affects all of us and global majority women often have worse symptoms which start earlier. I found these stories both inspiring and moving. I’m sure you will too.

Eleanor Mills, Founder of Noon.org.uk – home of the Queenager

The subject of Menopause is just beginning to break the barrier of taboo and become a mainstream discussion point, but that discussion has until now been very serious, medical, and, we would argue, heterosexual and white. This anthology of poems and short fiction aims to address that, with wild and wonderful writing from humour and anger, relief and distress, by women who have experienced menopause, whether naturally or as a result of surgery; with a healthy dose of views from the global majority and the lesbian, bisexual and trans communities.
poetry and stories from:
Adele Evershed
Alison Habens
Alyson Hallett
Amanda Addison
Anne Caldwell
Anne Eccleshall
Anne Macaulay
Cath Holland
Cheryl Powell
Chloe Balcomb
Claire Booker
Claire Lynn
Clare Starling
Ellesar Elhaggagi
Elizabeth A Richter
Em Gray
Erica Borgstrom
Genevieve Carver
Ginger Strivelli
Helen Campbell
Jane Ayres
Jane Burn
Jane McLaughlin
Jessica Manack
Joanne Harris
JP Seabright
Julie-Ann Rowell
Karen F Pierce
Kavita A Jindal
Kim Whysall-Hammond
Lucy Lasasso
Marina Sànchez
Martha Patterson
Mary Mulholland
Rachel Playforth
Ruth Higgins
Sian Northey
Susan Bennett
Susan Cartwright-Smith
Tessa Lang
Tina Bethea Ray
Victoria Bailey
Victoria Ekpo

For the Spring Equinox, looking forward to Byways

We will be publishing Byways, an anthology of poems and stories that take us off the beaten track this time next year, for the Spring Equinox, a time for getting the caked mud of winter off your boots and getting out for a walk!

Here are our contributors, mainly from the UK and USA, including a handful of poems in Welsh.

Adele Evershed
Amelia Foster
Angela Arnold
Annemarie Cooper
Annie Kissack
Attalea Rose
Cath Humphris
Des Mannay
Diana Powell
Eabhan Ní Shuileàbhain
Em Gray
Gloria Heffernan
Gregory McGreevy
Gwyn Parry
Heather Lane
Helen Campbell

Jane McLaughlin
Jeff Phelps
Jonah Corren
Josie Levin
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie
Katie Harrison
Katie Margaret Hall
Kelly Davis
Laura Besley
Lisa Farrell
Lizzie Lovejoy
Mab Jones
Maddie Price
Marcus Smith
Michael Shann
Michelle Penn

Mitzi Dorton
Nicholas McGaughey
Phil Wood
Raymond Luczak
Rhys Owain Williams
Ros Woolner
Sara Louise Wheeler
Seth Crook
Simon Chandler
Sue Burge
Sue Moules
Thea Smiley

For International Women’s Day: The Menopause Anthology Contributors

Happy International Women’s Day!

We are delighted to announce the contributors whose work we have chosen for our Menopause anthology. We are still considering a title for the book as a whole, ( is THE Menopause Anthology too obvious??) and still in discussion with a couple of authors, but the current roll call stands like this.

Adele Evershed
Alison Habens
Alyson Hallett
Amanda Addison
Anne Caldwell
Anne Eccleshall
Anne Macaulay
Cath Holland
Cheryl Powell
Chloe Balcomb
Claire Booker
Claire Lynn
Clare Starling
Ellesar Elhaggagi
Elizabeth A Richter
Em Gray
Erica Borgstrom
Genevieve Carver
Ginger Strivelli
Helen Campbell
Jane Ayres
Jane Burn
Jane McLaughlin
Jessica Manack
Joanne Harris
JP Seabright
Julie-Ann Rowell
Karen F Pierce
Kavita A Jindal
Kim Whysall-Hammond
Lucy Lasasso
Marina Sànchez
Martha Patterson
Mary Mulholland
Rachel Playforth
Ruth Higgins
Sian Northey
Susan Bennett
Susan Cartwright-Smith
Tessa Lang
Tina Bethea Ray
Victoria Bailey
Victoria Ekpo

Thank you everyone who submitted and congratulations to our contributors.

The Menopause Anthology will be published on Menopause Day, 18th October 2023. When, we have decided, all menopausal women should celebrate their last period, since we never actually know when it happened. Memorial or celebration, you choose, but we will be having cake. Put the date in your diary!

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Online Festival

To celebrate our tenth anniversary we are having an online festival throughout January 2023, mostly weekends and Thursdays, although a couple of Tuesdays and Fridays have snuck in.

We invited our authors and friends to run the events they wanted to see, to set their own prices and number of tickets. It’s quite an eclectic mix, readings, discussions and workshops for writers, and about writing, or the business of being a writer. We invite you to join us! Visit the Eventbrite Collection

Saturday 07/01/2023 11:00-13:00 Cath Humphris
Why Flash Fiction? (Writing Workshop)
12 places, donation recommended £5
details and tickets

Saturday 07/01/2023 17:00-19:00 Readings from authors
Hiatus eBook Launch
95 places, FREE
details and tickets

 

Sunday 08/01/2023 19:00-21:00 David Turnbull
Longevity In Fiction: Time Bestowed, Time Stolen (discussion)
30 places £6
details and tickets

 

 

Thursday 12/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Jackie Taylor
Writing the Climate: Questions for Writers (discussion)
12 places free/donation
details and tickets

 

 

Friday 13/01/2023 19:30-21:00 Diana Powell, Melissa Davies & Sherry Morris
Three Takes on Place (reading)
95 places free/donation
details and tickets

Saturday 14/01/2023 11:00-13:00 workshop Elizabeth Hopkinson
Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret (workshop)
12 places  £8
details and tickets

 

 

Saturday 14/01/2023 15:00 reading/open mic/discussion Jeremy Dixon & Cherry Potts
Joy//Us LGBTQ Poetry
40 places  free/donation
including 10 open mic spots of 3 mins each – max 2 poems!
details and tickets

 

Sunday 15/01/2023 15:00-16:30 Lowri Williams
Translating poetry from Welsh into English (workshop)
suitable for advanced learners of Welsh and native speakers.
10 places – pay what you can £3/£5/£8
details and tickets

 

 

Tuesday 17/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Kavita A Jindal
Emotion as Ignition (workshop)
20 places £20
details and tickets

 

 

Saturday 21/01/2023 12:00-1:30 Neil Lawrence
Resilient writers (workshop)
10 places £20
details and tickets

 

Saturday 21/01/2023 15:30-17:00 DL Williams, Lisa Kelly, Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford
Deaf Poetry and BSL translation
20 places Free/Donation
details and tickets

 

 

 

Tuesday  24/01/23 18:00-19:30 The Business of writing– The Society of Authors This is very kindly being run for us by two of the coordinators of the  Society of Authors Poetry & Spoken Word group: Johanna Clarke and Mathilde Zeeman

free tickets

Thursday 26/01/2023 19:00-20:30 Nikita Chadha
The Empire Writes Back: “Space, place and belonging” Interactive lecture/workshop
15 places £10
details and tickets

 

Friday 27/01/2023 18:30-20:00  Seni Seneviratne
Using family history/photos as inspiration for poetry (workshop)
20 places £12-£20
details and tickets

 

 

Sunday 29/01/2023 11:00-13:00 discussion/reading Clare Owen
Cormorants and #cornishgothic: creative ways to write about YA mental health.
15 places £5
details and tickets

 

Sunday 29/01/2023 15:00-16:30 workshop Saira Aspinall
Marketing on a tight budget for writers
12 places £10
details and tickets

 

 

writing workshops in Lewisham

We’ve teamed up with Lewisham Libraries to run a couple of In Person workshops for writers as part of our 10th Anniversary celebrations. Both are linked to upcoming anthologies, and we are hoping that participants will be inspired to submit (deadline 31st December 2022).

Saturday 12 Nov 3-4.3pm Catford Library 23-24 Winslade Way, Catford Centre, SE6 4JU
Off the beaten track with Cherry Potts
In preparation for an anthology of poems and short fiction Byways – which will be published in Spring 2024, Arachne Press editor Cherry Potts is running a writing workshop for anyone who is interested in the ideas behind the book.
A byway is a right of way that you can’t take a vehicle on – so think alleys, snickets, ginnels, bridlepaths, greenways, the highwater line on a beach, mountain passes, desire paths, tow paths… shortcuts or the scenic route, the path to somewhere else, the familiar and the uncertain.
Are there local paths you always take, or avoid? Come and write with us, and perhaps start something that could end up published! We’ll bring examples and writing prompts, you bring pen/paper or laptop, and… maybe a map? free tickets

Wed 16 Nov 6.45-9.15pm

LIBRARY, DEPTFORD LOUNGE,
9 GIFFIN STREET, LONDON, SE8 4RJ

 

Menopause
In preparation for an anthology of poems and short fiction inspired by the menopause, which will be published in October 2023, Arachne Press owner Cherry Potts and co-editor Catherine Pestano are running a writing workshop for anyone who would like to get involved. Our anthology call out is aimed firmly at older women, lesbians and women from the global majority. Our theme is the menopause, and we are looking for stories, flash and poems that go waaay beyond the empty nest and feelings of sexual redundancy, so come along and explore. We will provide playful writing prompts, examples and discussion including some useful facts about the menopause, you provide the imagination. Bring pen/paper or laptop. Free Tickets

Catherine Pestano is a menopause activist, social worker and community musician based in Croydon, South London and offers services through her community interest company Creative Croydon.  Key areas of interest include and the use of music and arts for wellbeing & social justice, Mental health and LGBTQ support. She is lead adviser for the national Song Therapy training and is a long-term member of the natural voice network.

Cherry Potts is a writer and creative writing tutor who runs and edits for Arachne Press.

Autumn Equinox Announcement: Winners of Haitus Solstice Shorts Competition

As a result of the limit on entries this year, our Hiatus competition finished early, allowing us to announce the results today, on the Autumn Equinox. [For time obsessives like me that was at precisely 3:04 BST this morning.]

Congratulations to our Shortlist:

Adrienne Silcock
Cath Humphris
Gabriel Noel
Jane McLaughlin
Juliet Humphreys
Karen Pierce
Michael Colonnese
River Fannin
Tiffany Troy

Thank you for surprising us, and/or making us laugh.

The winning spots were very close fought indeed, so unusually, we’re announcing the Runners-up:

Cath Humphris
Juliet Humphreys
Michael Colonnese

and our winners are:

Gabriel Noel with Ode Against Daylight Saving
and
Karen Pierce with Pause

Congratulations to Gabriel and Karen, both of whom are new to Arachne Press. Their work will be published in eBook form, in time for the Solstice, alongside…

Remember! we have a public vote for the BEST story/poem from each of the previous Solstice Shorts anthologies, which will join Karen and Gabriel’s work in the ‘Best of’ eBook, to mark this year’s Solstice, while we wait for the next time the Solstice falls at a weekend, and the next festival.
You can vote here (deadline 30 Sept 2022)

Vote for Arachne Press in the Saboteur Awards!

We are really pleased to be nominated for Most Innovative Publisher in the 2022 Saboteur Awards and to have Laura Besley’s brilliant 100neHundred nominated for Best Short Story Collection.

Thank you so much to everyone who voted to get us this far. The second round of voting is now open until the 7th May and we need you to help us win!

Please vote for Arachne Press and 100neHundred in their respective categories. We highly recommend a vote for Arachne author, Emma Lee who is nominated for Best Reviewer of Literature too.

The form for the second round of voting is available here.

This nomination means a lot because we have had to innovate and adapt a lot over the past few years, and we have taken some bold steps in our publishing activity. From branching into audiobooks for the very first time, with a commitment to inclusive, quality, contemporary publishing for everyone – no matter how they read; to producing our first fully bilingual book; creating BSL videos to accompany What Meets the Eye: The Deaf Perspective and making our books about more than just the words within them – by continuing important conversations in events such as our recent symposium on Writing the Diaspora.

We intend to keep innovating too! This year we have plans for a menopause anthology that will particularly represent LGBT+ and global majority women (submissions are open now!), and lots of writing workshops that will help us continue to give opportunities to writers from under-represented communities, or who are living in geographically isolated locations.

That’s enough about us… if you need a reminder of how excellent 100neHundred is you can listen to an audiobook extract here, read some of the Laura Besley’s favourite reviews here or buy a copy here.

Thank you for your votes – we’ll have our fingers crossed.

The Saboteur Awards have been running since 2011, we were last nominated (and won!) in 2014 with the anthology Weird Lies.

Follow this years awards on Twitter: #SaboteurAwards and #sabawards22

International Mermaid Day

We all need a bit of cheering up. I should be doing cash flows, so instead I’m posting about mermaids.

Just a short post, mind.

If you are in to Mermaid-kind you might like The Real McCoy

Cherry Potts’ story in We/She

I’ll tell you what though; you weren’t really expecting me, a genuine mermaid, were you? You thought I’d be some girlie in a clamshell bikini and yardage of slinky blue skirt with
unconvincing fins. So why are you disappointed that you got the real thing? That makes no sense at all! You should be in awe, really…
Very few of us survive without the sea. Take us away from it and we pine, dead in a fortnight mostly. Fortunately I’m tough, and I can see the positive side of a career.

And if you’ll stretch to a Selkie, then Jackie Taylor’s Pelt in Strange Waters might be just the thing.

Her scalp itched; her thick, grey-black hair fought against the tyranny of the new perm. She was uncomfortably hot and clammy in her new outer skin of trench coat (belted, beige), silk scarf, beret, tan leather gloves. Samuel had said when he met her at the station, ‘You scrub up well!’ And she’d winced at the thought of the skinning knives used to clean down pelts.
She wanted to take the trench coat off and carry it, but there was drizzle, and it was the wetting kind, and if her skin got wet, she would smell of the sea. She was never sure if anyone else could smell it, but the thought of it made her burn with shame.

Strange Waters is also available as an audiobook read by Sophie Aldred

Happy Mermaid Day!

International Women’s Day Submission Call

Thinking about International Women’s Day, sometimes you wonder how any of us manage to live to grow up, the world can be so hard on women; and sometimes you want to celebrate everything we can be. Being of a cheerful disposition, we’ve gone for celebration.

We thought today was an excellent time to launch our submission call for an anthology of women’s writing. We are giving you a spectacularly long run in on this one, because we want it to be truly amazing, and because we are planning some writing workshops which will be run by editors Cherry Potts and Catherine Pestano (as soon as the funding is in place, we’ll let you know!). These will definitely be available online, for maximum reach, and may also be in person, depending on where we can find suitable writer-friendly venues and what the position is with Covid.

Our October 2023 Anthology is aimed firmly at older women, lesbians and women from the global majority. Our theme is menopause, and the book will be published on Menopuase day 2023 (October the 1st), we want your stories, flash and poems that go waaay beyond the empty nest and feelings of sexual redundancy. Tell us something we don’t know, go wild and magnificent…tell us about surgically induced menopause, unexpected benefits, the freedom of not bleeding… whatever genre you want (within our guidelines), but surprise us.

Submissions via Submittable ONLY

If you need a steer, Helen Morris’ magnificent The Change in Departures is our favourite Menopause story (so far!)

Helen Morris reads from The Change