Tenth anniversary events: Writing the Body, with Lewisham Libraries

Still to come …

Saturday 22 April 2 – 4pm
Manor House Library 34 Old Road, London, SE13 5SY
Memoir and Monologue
Using memory and humour to create a short piece that has the potential to be
performed. With author, comedienne and Polari Prize judge, VG Lee.

Saturday 13 May 2 – 4pm
Catford Library 23-24 Winslade Way, Catford Centre, SE6 4JU
Exploring Creativity
Using visual and physical prompts related to the body to spark ideas. Particularly, but not exclusively, open to anyone thinking of submitting to Arachne Press’s LGBTQ+ poetry anthology Joy//Us. With author and editor/publisher at Arachne Press, Cherry Potts.
Book on this link or in person/by phone at the relevant library

FREE!

The Library at Deptford Lounge 020 8314 7299
Manor House Library    020 8463 0420
Catford Library   020 8314 8816

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Sale – June

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We are celebrating our 10th Anniversary by exploring our back catalogue and inviting you to do likewise with special offers on books celebrating their anniversaries in each month.

OUR 10TH ANNIVERSARY RUNS FROM SEPTEMBER 2022 TO AUGUST 2023. WE ARE OFFERING DIFFERENT BOOKS AT 50% OFF EACH MONTH, AS BOOKS HIT THEIR ANNIVERSARIES.

So for June we have a voucher, ARA10JUN, to get 50% off the following books

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Accidental Flowers (novel)

Paper Crusade (poetry)

Story Cities (flash)

Brat (YA Novel)

Wolftalker (YA Novel)

The Old Woman from Friuli (illustrated children’s story)

 

All you need to do is use the code ARA10JUN at the checkout when you buy any or all of these books – you can only use the code once, so we encourage you to buy in bulk!

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Sale – FEBRUARY

We are celebrating our 10th Anniversary by exploring our back catalogue and inviting you to do likewise with special offers on books celebrating their anniversaries in each month.

So for FEBRUARY we have a voucher, ARA10FEB, to get 50% off the following books

 

the first few books are poetry, the last is an epic lesbian fantasy novel.

The Significance of a Dress by Emma Lee – a book that didn’t really get its moment in the sun, being published just as we went into lockdown, explores feminism and the refugee experience in sharp, effective poems.

In Retail by Jeremy Dixon tiny poems originally written on the back of till receipts behind the counter of a high street pharmacy.

Foraging by Joy Howard poems of natures and bereavement

With Paper for Feet by Jennifer A McGowan takes on Shakespeare’s women, witches, and folk tales from around the world, served up in witty pithy angy poems.

The Dowry Blade by Cherry Potts described by another Arachne author as Game of Thrones with lesbians and without dragons.

All you need to do is use the code ARA10FEB at the checkout when you buy any or all of these books – you can only use the code once, so we encourage you to buy in bulk!

Arachne 10th Anniversary – the Authors – a short series part 5

A reminder that this anniversary festival is all the work of our authors, from making suggestions as to what they would want to attend, to putting together the events. We just promote and host!

I thought it would be useful to give you all a bit more detail about the authors who have put together our amazing, eclectic anniversary events.

For our fourth week we have events on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and  Sunday (two events)

Tuesday Jan 24, 2023 6pm 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

Johanna Clarke has been an advisor at the SoA since October 2021. She advises writers on publishing contracts and issues, and works closely on their outreach programme. Johanna is one of the coordinators of the SoA’s Poetry and Spoken Word Group.

Mathilde Zeeman joined the SoA in 2022. She recently transferred from the Membership team to the Advisory team where she will continue her work advising writers on publishing issues, and is a coordinator of the SoA’s Poetry and Spoken Word Group.

[not part of the festival, but on Wednesday 25th, 7.30pm Jeremy Dixon is reading from his award winning poetry collection, A Voice Coming from Then at Verbatim, at the Poetry Pharmacy in Bishops Castle, Shropshire.]

Thursday Jan 26, 2023 7pm The Empire Writes Back: “Space, place and belonging” is being run by Nikita Aashi Chadha 

Nikita is a writer, poet and social commentator who advocates for an intersectional lens and approach to be utilised – she is committed to spotlighting the ‘other’, those who are chronically unheard and underrepresented within society. Her poetry focuses on the experiences of the South Asian diaspora, mental health and identity. Nikita’s poem Jallianwalla Bagh appears in our anthology Where We Find Ourselves, and she chaired our Writing the Diaspora panel. Nikita is also a patient voice advocate, lead facilitator and speaker for Cysters (a non-profit that specialises in supporting marginalised people with reproductive and mental health problems. Instagram: @nikkaayyy_c @didacticdiaspora @cystersgroup

Friday Jan 27, 2023 6.30pm Using family history/photos as inspiration for poetry with Seni Seneviratne

Seni was born and raised in Leeds, of English and Sri Lankan heritage. Published by Peepal Tree Press – Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin (2007), The Heart of It (2012), Unknown Soldier (2019). She is a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry and has collaborated with film-makers, visual artists, musicians and digital artists. She is one of ten commissioned writers on the Colonial Countryside Project: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. She is currently co-editing a Bloodaxe anthology of post-independence Tamil, Sinhala and English poetry and working on her fourth collection. She lives in Derbyshire and works as a freelance writer. Arachne published Seni’s poem,Triptychs Without Borders, in our Global Majority anthology, Where We Find Ourselves, and Seni took part in our writing the Diaspora panel.

Sunday Jan 29, 2023 11am  Writing About Mental Health in YA fiction: Cormorants & #cornishgothic with Clare Owen

After working as an actor and arts administrator in London, Clare married a boat builder and moved to Cornwall. She promptly had three children and set up an improvised theatre company, re-enacting the stories of their audiences around the county. More recently she has co-written and performed with the all women ensemble, ‘Riot of the Freelance Mind’ and she regularly reads her short fiction at spoken word events and local festivals. Her first YA novel Zed and the Cormorants, was published by Arachne Press in April 2021 and is the winner of the Holyer An Gof YA prize and the Ann Trevenen Jenkin cup. Clare also had a story in our anthology, An Outbreak of Peace, both the short story and the novel explore various aspects of mental health through the lens of a young adult protaganist, and the way the natural world can help.

Sunday Jan 29, 2023 3pm  Marketing on a Tight Budget for Writers with Saira Aspinall

Saira is our marketing expert. What she can achieve with no budget and in only one day a week is positively miraculous, you really want to hear what she has to say!

Arachne 10th Anniversary – the Authors – a short series part 4

I thought it would be useful to give you all a bit more detail about the authors who have put together our amazing, eclectic anniversary events.

For our third week we have events on Tuesday, Saturday (two events) and Sunday

Emotion as Ignition Tuesday Jan 17, 2023 7pm with Kavita A Jindal

Kavita A. Jindal is an award-winning poet, fiction-writer and essayist. Her novel Manual For A Decent Life won the Eastern Eye Award for Literature 2020 and the Brighthorse Prize. She has published three slim volumes of poetry: Raincheck Accepted, Raincheck Renewed and Patina.  She served as Senior Editor at Asia Literary Review and is co-founder of The Whole Kahani writers’ collective. Kavita’s workshop is aimed at short fiction and poetry writers, and is about harnessing emotions for creativity. She says that her story Cocoon Lucky in Where We Find Ourselves came out of anger, and I can relate to that, as it was temper that created Arachne Press!

On Saturday 21st our first event is at 12:00, when we have the first of our looking after yourself as a writer sessions, Resilient writers with writer and coach Neil Lawrence.

Neil taught Wellbeing Education in secondary schools for 25 years. He is now a Life coach and Organisational Consultant. Keenly creative, he is a musician who has performed on the acoustic circuit as well as being an impassioned writer.Neil sent this little video to explain his workshop.

The second Saturday workshop at 3.30 is Deaf poetry and BSL translation with DL Williams, Lisa Kelly and Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford

We had a huge BSL translation project for What Meets the Eye, and the conversations between writers and translators were fascinating and I really wanted to share them, so this is our first attempt at that. this workshop will be conducted in BSL with english interpretation and auto captions

DL is a deaf queer poet fluent in British Sign Language and English. Working with such different languages has inspired a deep interest in translation and how her work can be made accessible to signing and non-signing audiences. They have performed around the UK including at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Millennium Centre and the Albert Hall, as well as in America and Brazil.

Lisa Kelly is one of our two guest editors for our Deaf Anthology What Meets the Eye? The Deaf perspective.

We have published Lisa’s poems in Solstice Shorts Anthology, Shortest Day, Longest Night and Dusk

Lisa Kelly has single-sided deafness. She is also half Danish. Her first collection,  Lisa is co-editor of The Deaf Issue, Magma 69. She has been shortlisted four times for the Bridport Prize, longlisted for the National Poetry Competition in 2016 and 2018 and won the 2016 University of Lancaster (MA) ‘Reading’ Prize. In 2019, she read at Poetry International, Southbank Centre for d/Deaf Republic: Poets on Deafness. In 2020, she was commissioned by Nottingham Trent University in partnership with the Science Museum to create a film-poem in collaboration with other poets responding to telephony from a d/Deaf and marginalised perspective. She is currently studying British Sign Language, and is a freelance journalist writing about technology and business. Her latest pamphlet, From The IKEA Back Catalogue, is published by New Walk Editions 2021.

Mary-Jayne is a theatre maker and workshop facilitator. She is passionate about deaf / disabled theatre and empowering people through the use of theatre and drama. Mary-Jayne has a degree in Theatre Arts, Education and Deaf Studies from the University of Reading, and since graduating in 2005 has have worked as a freelance facilitator, scriptwriter, BSL storyteller, actor, stage manager, ambassador, director and BSL poet. She has taught BSL poetry, with a focus on poem translation from BSL to English rather than English to BSL.

And finally (for this week) Sunday at 6.30pm, a second looking after you workshop, What’s it about? Synopsis and Pitch with Katy Darby. Katy has co-edited several of our anthologies, teaches creative writing at City, University of London and co-runs London Live Lit series Liars’ League. I’ve heard her accurately reduce a doorstop of a book to 9 words, so she knows what you need to pitch and write a synopsis, difficult tasks at the best of times.

Arachne 10th Anniversary – the Authors – a short series part 3

I thought it would be useful to give you all a bit more detail about the authors who have put together our amazing, eclectic anniversary events.

15th January and our second Sunday, and we have two events.

First at 11am we have 14 great pickup lines, a poet’s guide to sonnets presented by Jennifer A McGowan

Jennifer A McGowan

Jennifer has been published by us consistently, from a single poem in our very first poetry anthology The Other Side of Sleep,  to her first full poetry pamphlet With Paper for Feet and her most recent collection, How to be a Tarot Card, (or a Teenager) which we published in October. Jennifer lives in Oxfordshire. She has been a semi-professional mime and performed in five countries as well as more traditional work as researcher, editor, and writer for a strategic management company. She has taught both at several universities, in subjects as varied as English, history, and heritage studies. Jennifer is also an historical re-enactor who disappears out of the 20th Century for weeks at a time. Jennifer was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome at age 16, and has had long covid for most of the past 2 years, and can still come up with a snappy and beguiling title for a workshop!

Later in the day at 3pm, we have Barddoniaeth Cymraeg Gweithdy Cyfieithu Welsh Poetry Translation Workshop with Lowri Williams.

The root cause of our bilingual anthology, A470 Poems for the Road/ Cerddi’r Ffordd was realising there were Welsh poets writing (beautifully) in English, who weren’t confident enough in their Welsh to write poetry in their native language. If ever there was an overhang of English cultural imperialism, there it was staring me in the face, and I was outraged. You can’t get specific grants for translation into Welsh, only out of it. I was more outraged! So I decided to do something about it.  So this workshop is very much in the same mode of enabling people in their goddess given right to write in their native language. My welsh is limited to Diolch (Thank You) Bore da (hello)  and what I read on road signs – appropriately – and I’m very grateful to Lowri for taking it on!

Lowri is a Creative Writing graduate from MMU, nature writer, and bilingual poet for BRAG magazine. She loves the sea and spends her spare time surfing at Porth Neigwl. During the evenings she’s a cocktail bartender who enjoys drinking Margaritas with her aunt. Lowri’s poem in A470 proved very useful when I was driving up and down that very road, touring the book to bookshops and libraries – here’s why. I pretty sure she’ll be great company for the workshop!

Arachne 10th Anniversary – the Authors – a short series part 2

I thought it would be useful to give you all a bit more detail about the authors who have put together our amazing, eclectic anniversary events.

Our second saturday, and we have two events.

First at 11am we have Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret presented by Elizabeth Hopkinson.

Elizabeth Hopkinson

We’ve published  Elizabeth in our 2018 women only Liars’ League anthology We/She and our 2019 Solstice Shorts anthology Time and Tide, and our 8th anniversary anthology No Spider Harmed in the Making of this Book.
Outside Arachne publications, Elizabeth has written loads of stories which have been published in anthologies and magazines. More recently she has published three books of revisionist mythology, Asexual Fairy Tales, More Asexual Fairy Tales, and Asexual Myths & Tales.

Later in the day at 3pm, we are introducing the call out for Joy//Us, an anthology of LGBTQ poetry, which will be presented by Arachne editor Cherry Potts and Poet, Jeremy Dixon who will be the co-editor; and poet Rick Dove. We publish lots of LGBTQ writers but it feels like time to actually showcase that, and give a bit of focus to the work we are creating with our LGBTQ authors and poets.

Cherry Potts

Cherry Potts (me!) is the founder/owner of Arachne Press, which she started in a fit of anger after a fall out with her then publisher (a case of I could do it better myself... which I could, but my goodness, I didn’t realise it would be such hard work). She has published an epic lesbian fantasy novel The Dowry Blade and 2 short story collections Tales Told Before Cockcrow and Mosaic of Air, and has numerous stories in anthologies and magazines.

Jeremy Dixon

Jeremy Dixon has been published by us consistently, from a single poem in our very first poetry anthology The Other Side of Sleep, and in Solstice Shorts anthology Dusk,  and our bilingual anthology A470, via three poems in Liberty Tales, to a poetry pamphlet In Retail,  to Jeremy’s first full collection, A Voice Coming From Then which we publishedin August 2021 and WON the poetry category for Wales Book of the Year English Language Poetry. Jeremy is a great supporter of Arachne, providing workshops and hand made books for our crowdfunds.

Rick Dove

Rick Dove is joining us to give an additional example of our existing cohort of LGBTQ writers. We published a poem by Rick in Where We Find Ourselves, a long three part family history, which so delighted me I went in search of a biography of Ricks Great Aunt, the first black woman to sing on the BBC!
Rick is a mixed-race, London based poet whose work draws narratives, and styles, from wide influences, always takes a keen interest in both societal and personal change, and how these cardinal forces interact as we grow. A regular performer on the London poetry scene since 2015, Rick has been published in numerous poetry zines and the national press. His first pamphlet, Haigha’s Noosphere Canticles, was published in 2017 by William Cornelius Harris Publishing, and his debut full collection Tales From the Other Box, was published by Burning Eye in 2020. In July 2021, Rick became the UK Poetry Slam Champion for 2021.

Arachne 10th Anniversary online festival starts TODAY 11am GMT

At last! We are all systems go with the Online Festival

Our very first event is this morning at 11am, there are a couple of tickets left if you hurry …for Why Flash Fiction? Writing Workshop with Cath Humphris,  donation (recommended £5) details

 

Then this afternoon 17:00-19:00 we are launching Hiatus the ‘Best of’ eBook for Solstice Shorts, chosen by public vote, with readings from authors this is a  FREE event details and tickets

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow, the first of our events that address our fondness for speculative fiction, 19:00-21:00 a discussion led by  David Turnbull

Longevity In Fiction: Time Bestowed, Time Stolen
plenty of tickets left £6 more details

 

The Festival as a whole is 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!

continuing the speculative theme, on Saturday 14/01/2023 11:00-13:00 we have a workshop with  Elizabeth Hopkinson Tales of Transformation: Bisclavret Details and tickets  £8

 

 

and a reading and workshop from Katy Darby on Saturday 28/01/2023 18:30-20:30 Anatomy of a Ghost Story
details and tickets £10

 

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

 

 

Visit the Eventbrite Collection to see and book for the rest of our events

 

 

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Sale – JANUARY

We are celebrating our 10th anniversary by exploring our back catalogue and inviting you to do likewise with special offers on books celebrating their anniversaries in each month.

So for December we had a voucher, ARA10DEC, to get 50% off the following books – mostly Solstice anthologies that month, which may not be a surprise, plus a YA Fantasy novel.

Because we hardly ever publish a book in January, we are extending the December voucher to the end of January, so keep using ARA10DEC for the solstice books, and we are adding the only January book Lovers’ Lies which is already reduced to £5, so if you use ARA10JAN you get it for £2.50! That’s clear, isn’t it??

 

 

Dusk 2017

Shortest Day, Longest Night  2016

 

Solstice Shorts, Sixteen Stories About TIME 2014

Tymes goe by Turnes 2020

Words From the Brink 2021

Spellbinder  2017

All you need to do is use the code ARA10DEC at the checkout when you buy any or all of these books – you can only use the code once, so we encourage you to buy in bulk!

Arachne Tenth Anniversary Sale – November

We are celebrating our 10th anniversary by exploring our back catalogue and inviting you to do likewise with special offers on books celebrating their anniversaries in each month.

So for November we have a voucher, ARA10NOV, to get 50% off the following books – all anthologies this month, as we often do a book to coincide with Short Story week in November.

Liberty Tales 2015 marked the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and Arachne Press celebrated with an evening of stories, poetry and song on the subject of Liberty. The call out continued until the end of the year, and here are the collected and eclectic responses.

Outbreak of Peace Stories and Poems in Response to the End of WWI November 2018 marked the centenary of the end of World War I. After all the commemorative works of art over the previous four years, we felt it was important to reflect on what comes after – an outbreak of peace, and what that meant to the combatants and those left at home. This wide-ranging collection brings together stories and poems from many countries, on both sides of the 1914-18 conflict, finding their inspiration in many wars and their endings; together with stories and poems which are not about war at all, which is as it should be.

Stations Already reduced to £5 so with this offer a teeny £2.50! Twenty-four new short stories in homage to the East and South London section of the Overground Line: a story for every station from New Cross, Crystal Palace and West Croydon at the Southern extremes of the line, all the way to Highbury & Islington.

What Meets the Eye Poems, short fiction and scripts from UK Deaf, deaf and Hard of Hearing writers. on the theme of movement.

Departures: from The Story Sessions Stories and poems of leaving and going adrift, being left behind, taking wrong turns, stepping out of the everyday and making splendid leaps into the dark.The Story Sessions ran for four years in south London. Our monthly themed events took a lead from folkclubs, we had headliners, support acts and floor spots – Flash from the Floor, audience participation written in the interval.
The Story Sessions was an invigorating, sweet experiment, and we are proud to have created a permanent record – new stories from some of The Story Sessions stalwarts and discoveries.

 

All you need to do is use the code ARA10NOV at the check out when you buy any or all of these books – you can only use the code once, so we encourage you to buy in bulk!