GUY MANKOWSKI

On 5th January I'm starting a new night for Creative Writers called  New Art Social . It'll be a place for emerging writers to share their work alongside more established novelists and poets. I'm keen to start to break down the boundaries between writers, given we all share the same challenges, and I'm excited by the writers who are signed up for the night.  John Challis (recipient of a Northern Writers Award and author of 'The Black Cab' and Kris Johnson (who's been featured in Poetry London and The Irish Literary Review) head up the poetry component.  Emily Anderson  will be reading samples of humorous writing from WW1, which her PhD is concerned with. Amy Mccadden and Genna Godley (whose work is on ‘weirding’ or reconstructing the human body) will also read poetry, alonside David Bell, whose work ‘dispels silly local fantasies’. On the prose side Chris Fuller and Nikita Garner will be reading. Also featured are Unthanks Books'  Sarah Dobbs , ...

With 'An Honest Deceit' having recently been re-released as an Audiobook (narrated by Ian Rankin's excellent narrator Chris Reilly) it was truly great to see that the book has just reached number one in quite a few of Amazon's charts- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Honest-Deceit-gripping-thriller-shocking-ebook/dp/B01LXYS1OR/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= You can buy it as a novel, for the Kindle, or (if you're more of a listener) as an Audiobook on the link above. Thanks to all those who've bought it and made it my most reviewed book so far. 

I thought a blog post making my PhD readily available online might be helpful. This was a Creative Writing PhD on self-design in the post-punk movement. The novel component of the PhD, entitled 'How I Left The National Grid', is available as  a free preview on Google Books, here-   https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/How_I_Left_The_National_Grid.html?id=yABKBgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y   Abstract Through creative and critical practice, this PhD makes an original contribution by developing theories of self-design in relation to understandings and creative representations of the post-punk movement. These materials inform the creative component of this PhD, a novel entitled   How I Left The National Grid   (hereafter,   HILTNG).   Broadly, speaking, the results, discussion and conclusion for the PhD are as follows: The term ‘self-design’ builds upon the research of Stephen Greenblatt (1980).   Greenblatt used the term ‘self-fashioning’ to ex...

Was recently asked to contribute to a textbook which has a chapter on author's notebooks and how they use them. It was a request which threw up some interesting stuff once I went into my box of notebooks... Notebooks for How I Left The National Grid (Roundfire, 2015)- Notebook for Letters from Yelena (2012)-

I’m currently teaching creative writing for  Penguin Random House  (Writing for Beginner's and currently Constructing A Novel), the   Open College of the Arts  (Writing Skills and Scriptwriting) and elsewhere. I often have students asking questions along similar lines and having written some blogs on the various aspects of creative writing I thought I should create a go-to place where these resources can be easily found. So without further ado here is the main link-  https://weareoca.com/author/guy-mankowski/ And here are links on various subjects (links in bold). There are also on the above link many other pieces on various subjects to do with being a writer, such as on getting your work published, touring to promote your work, but below are the links that are perhaps most educational.  Reflective essays Tips for writing dialogue Writing short fiction- Part 1    Part 2    Weaving research into your writi...

'An Honest Deceit is an absolutely breathtaking, outstanding and powerful book that hooks you very quickly, so you could easily read it in one day. It evoked such strong emotions that I had to wait a while before writing my review'-  http://thebookmagnet.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/an-honest-deceit-guy-mankowski.html?m=1

On the night I heard that the brilliant Mark Fisher (author of Capitalist Realism and the wonderful Ghosts Of My Life), had suddenly died I stayed up late and wrote this piece on his legacy. 3:am magazine published it the very next day here . It's a piece that takes in the effects of Donald Trump, Jeremy Hunt's destruction of the NHS, and the Iraq war using the lens of Capitalist Realism that Fisher offered us. It also looks at what we can do about the current situation that neo-liberalism put us in. There may be plenty to resist, but the next generation that will be in power gives me lots to be positive about. 'We are living in an era in which the unacceptable is expected to be accepted 'just because' certain people say so.' 

Thought I'd mention two articles that radical Parisian literature magazine 3:am published of mine on subjects dear to my heart. As any fule no I'm a long term Richey Edwards fan, so was honoured to discuss the man's literary legacy with Daniel Lukes, co-author of Repeater Books' forthcoming collection about Manic Street Preachers' masterpiece The Holy Bible, entitled  ' Tryptych ' . The connection came about as a result of Lukes mentioning in 'Tryptych' that my novel, ' How I Left The National Grid ' was influenced by Edwards. What followed is a chat about Kurt Cobain, Nine Inch Nails, JG Ballard, Franz Kafka and other artists who impacted upon the mysterious lyricist- http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/archives-pain-holy-bible/ I also wrote a review of Repeaters excellent volume 'Post Punk: Then And Now'- commenting 'regarding the nebulous concept of post-punk, there are still many questions left unan...