GUY MANKOWSKI

I'm very excited that at Dance City, Newcastle this evening my second novel is being released. The launch will coincide with a performance of a scene from the book choreographed by Dora Frankel, featuring the Argentinian ballet dancer Laila Sanz (talking with me above during the development of the performance). In case that is a little too far afield, below are some of the advance quotes for the novel which I hope will entice you to buy it-   ‘It’s unusual to find a young male writer who can write with such sensitivity and maturity. Guy Mankowski’s portrayal of the ballerina Yelena is wholly convincing, taking us inside her thoughts and feelings as she describes the course of her life, from harrowing childhood to professional success, punctuated with turbulent emotional crisis. This is clearly a writer of great talent.’  Andrew Crumey, Booker Prize longlisted author. Guy Mankowski’s second novel, Letters from Yelena, is a fantastic literary achievemen...

  On Saturday there was great newspaper coverage surrounding the fact that Victoria Pendleton, one of Britain’s most successful athletes, had revealed a history of self-harm. In a new memoir she describes how she cut herself with a pair of nail scissors, even on the night after she had won her first cycling Gold at the Beijing Olympics. In so doing I feel she has shed a strong light on the way our culture views mental illness. There is increasing acknowledgement of the fact that mental health issues carry with them a stigma. This story had such an impact because Pendleton is ‘a high achiever’, and this disclosure therefore flies in the face of many prejudices about mental illness. The prevailing view seems to still be that some people are ‘mentally well’ and the rest ‘suffer mental illness’, though this binary understanding flies in the face of mental health research, which indicates that mental health problems exist on a spectrum. I noticed one tweet from a sports feed...