A Writer’s Life – what I’ve been up to recently
Summary
Blogger: AoifeRole: Author
Area: Fiction
Aoife Mannix is an Irish writer and poet based in London. Her first novel 'Heritage of Secrets' was published by Lubin & Kleyner in November 2008 and will be released in paperback in July 2009 under the main flipped eye imprint. » »
Books
Heritage of Secrets (HB: Nov 2008)Heritage of Secrets (PB: due Jul 2009)
I’ve just set up a facebook group for my novel ‘Heritage of Secrets’ which is due out in November. You can join it here http://tinyurl.com/6b35en. I’ll be reading from the novel at Loose Muse at the Poetry Café, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden on September 10th at 8pm.
Last Thursday myself and musician Janie Armour performed our Phrased & Confused commission ‘Different Words For Snow’ at the newly revamped Soho Revue Bar. Stripped of its strippers, it still retains an air of plush velvet decadence, winding staircases and mirrors that warp your reflection. We were performing in the piano bar where the leather seats flip up like you’re in a cinema from the seventies. A nice crowd that were getting a bit worryingly chatty before the interval but when we came on were gratifyingly quiet and focussed. After the Summer Sundae Weekender Festival, it was only our second time performing these pieces but I felt like the pace of the words and the music were really starting to come together. Have a listen at http://www.myspace.com/aoifemannixandjaniearmour.
Myself and writer Sarah Butler have just become writers in residence on Greenwich Peninsula as part of Spread The Word’s Almost An Island project. We plan to produce a soundscape that will be a mix of interviews with local people, the stories they have to tell about the area, and what we write in response to this bizarre and fascinating environment. We’ve set up a blog at http://almostanisland.blogspot.com/. Yesterday we walked around the west side of the Peninsula. We cut along narrow lanes lined with barbed wire offering odd glimpses of an industrial wasteland in the middle of mutating into something habitable. I started to get a bit nervous as we approached two gigantic diggers emptying huge amounts of soil into a floating barge. There didn’t seem to be another human soul for miles and I was struck by how unusual it was that in the middle of London we could feel so alone. Of course, on closer inspection, the diggers had drivers inside them who patiently stopped their mammoth task to let us pass.
Today I’ve been editing my soundscape for the Wellcome Collection’s London’s Dead event on September 18. A few weeks ago, they asked me to spend a day at their Skeletons exhibition interviewing visitors about their reactions to the exhibition. Questions included whether they thought it right to put human remains on display, if they believed in ghosts, where they would like to be buried themselves? It sounds morbid but actually it was really fascinating and strangely life affirming to talk to so many different types of people about their attitudes to death. Find out more at http://tinyurl.com/5r6h25.
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