mostly truthful


I had a lovely time reading at the launch of Mostly Truthful at Lancaster Liftest on Saturday. I must admit I expected it to be a little bit nerve-wracking as opposed to enjoyable, but in the end it proved to be an altogether very pleasant experience. It was great to be back in Lancaster, in the pleasingly familiar surroundings of the (albeit newly refurbished) Storey Institute and the audience were fantastic, but most of all, I really enjoyed the opportunity to hear my fellow writers, Jane Routh, Adrian Slatcher and Kate Feld, reading from their work.

Editor Sarah Hymas describes Mostly Truthful as "Flax's first adventure into creative non-fiction ... a vibrant collection of voices that represent a slice of now, of us being on the brink, as always, of change."

You can download the anthology, which also has an introduction by Jenn Ashworth, for free from the Litfest website here.

2 comments:

1 November 2009 at 20:43 kim mcgowan said...

Mostly Truthful is well worth downloading too, Katherine.
In Thinking Inside the Box you reminded me of Dewberry (my daughter was in a perpetual cloud of Dewberry in her last year at high school in the late eighties)
And,
You gave me a name for something I’ve often experienced, but never had a term for - borrowed nostalgia. The last time I experienced that sort of wistfulness was on a visit to a small town called Crail in Fife. Crail has about three shops now but I learned in the museum that at one time the town inhabitants had no reason to go anywhere else for services; there were tailors, roofers, milliners, butchers, bakers, carpenters, book binders, potters, fishermen, dressmakers and every other type of trades-person with premises right there on their doorsteps. I wanted to be in a time when, if I wanted a lobster or a smart new funeral hat, I just had to walk along to the special shop down the road. Sadly, there was a downside to the town’s insularity; the Kirk ruled and the church had a naughty stool where you had to sit on Sunday if you’d gone off the rails. Going off the rails could comprise anything from getting shaved on a Sunday to having sexual relations outside wedlock – I have no sense of nostalgia for a holy naughty stool.
kim

6 November 2009 at 14:53 Katherine Woodfine said...

Thanks for this lovely comment Kim. I'm really glad you enjoyed the piece.