GUY MANKOWSKI

(NB- this one is for people who’ve already read it only- spoiler threat alert!) I’ve been very touched by the reviews and response so far to “Dead Rock Stars”. Given what a personal novel it was (I was brought up on the Isle of Wight and much of it centres around a young, lost, creative boy called Jeff who isn’t a million miles from me) I feared it wouldn’t find an audience or even have once, so when it went to #2 on some Amazon charts a week or so ago I was encouraged.  More than any other novel I’ve written it was written with real geographic locations in mind, many of them based around the places I lived as a young boy on the Isle of Wight.  But the opening scene is set, during the nineties heyday of Emma (heavily into her Kinderwhore phase at this point) at The Purple Turtle in Camden, a venue which I had great times playing at with my own band Alba Nova.  It’s a novel written over the course of one summer, a summer in which Jeff brings himself to read the diary that ...

All too often as writers I think it’s very easy for us to get our ambition caught up with trying to making good art. A few years ago various novels on the go with which I had a lot of hopes and ambitions caught up with. But then a scene- in which a young boy remembers watching his sister perform with her band and how watching her changed him- pushed itself to the fore in my mind.   This one scene seemed to come from nowhere and almost write itself. When I shared it online there was a natural, organic reaction from strangers (very unusual, usually it’s like sending something out into a void!) and people said they really liked it and wanted more. While I ploughed on thanklessly with novels in which all these grand pseudo intellectual ideas were being played out through tortured plot lines I would sometimes, for my idea of fun, go back to that little story of his boy and his sister. What was curious was the extent to which (and I know this is common for writers ) my own experiences, s...

I'm thrilled to share that my first novel since 2016 is being published internationally by Darkstroke / Crooked Cat Books in September; Emma Imrie was a Plath-obsessed, self-taught teenage musician dreaming of fame, from a remote village on the Isle of Wight. She found it too, briefly becoming a star of the nineties Camden music scene. But then she died in mysterious circumstances. In the aftermath of Emma’s death, her younger brother, Jeff, is forced by their parents to stay at the opulent home of childhood friends on the island. During a wild summer of beach parties and music, Jeff faces up to the challenges that come with young love, youthful ambition and unresolved grief. His sister’s prodigious advice from beyond the grave becomes the only weapon he has against an indifferent world. As well as the only place where the answers he craves might exist… "Dead Rock Stars" took a long time to write and I benefited from the input of lots of readers. On one level ...

I'm honoured to have just signed a contract with Zer0 Books- home to brilliant authors such as Mark Fisher and Laurie Penny- for my first non-fiction collection, 'Albion's Secret History- Snapshots of England’s Rebels and Outsiders'. This volume compiles snapshots of English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders- from Evelyn Waugh to PJ Harvey via The Long Blondes and The Libertines. By focusing on cultural figures who served to define England, this book looks at those who have really shaped Albion’s secret history- not just its oft-quoted official cultural history. By departing from the narrative that dutifully follows the Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Oasis and by instead penetrating the surface of England’s pop history (including the venues it was shaped in) this piece throws new light on ideas of Englishness. As well as music it draws from art, film, architecture and politics, showing the moments at which artists like Tricky and Goldfrapp altered our sense ...