GUY MANKOWSKI

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 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 ...

My next novel, ‘Camden Afterlife’, follows the wild summer of a teenage boy coming to terms with the loss of his sister, Emma, a star of the nineties Riot Grrrl music scene. Part of the novel is told through Emma’s diary, which he finds, and which offers him a way to gradually face up to what really happened to her.  The following is Emma’s first diary entry, in which she runs away from home to see PJ Harvey perform in London (and which describes a real gig)- Everything is coming to a head. So, in an attempt to prove his devotion to me Jay bought me a ticket to a PJ Harvey gig in London a few weeks ago. Setting me a collision course with Mum. The gig was on a school night. But of course, diary, I still went. Despite all the repercussions. Which even now, two weeks later, are still being felt. I still went, because going to it is the only thing in my future that feels remotely related to what I want to do with my ...

I often feel like a bit of a fraud when people ask me who my favourite writers are. They seem to be a small, insular crowd which people don’t particularly associate with literary prowess. It seems slightly disingenuous to say that my greatest influences have been records. I’m always attracted to works in which the listener can be drawn in by three or four rich threads. For instance, in Siri Hustvedt’s wonderful novel What I Loved, I found myself enraptured by four or five circling themes that rose recurrently like distant riffs. The idea of faded romance, the way art reveals the psyche of its creator, the vertigo in trying to reign in someone who always remains unknowable, even to themselves. Giving the audience that room is something that in my own writing I’m always trying to achieve. Paul Auster has written eloquently about how he intends his books to ultimately give the reader room to find themselves in. It is perhaps just something I have just found it easier to do with recor...