Blind Creations: Lighting the Grow/volution!
As the Greeks vote a resounding NO to austerity, here in the UK disabled activists prepare again to storm Westminster on Wednesday to protest the abolishment of the Independent Living Fund. Everywhere the war on the poor is cutting deep, and people are fighting back. We living in desperate times, and yet also there’s an exciting spirit of defiance…
Greece: Anti-Austerity in Action!
Home from ten days in Greece, a defiant indulgence in the face of my own turbulent finances, and my fourth trip to the country, the first I ever visited in continental Europe. For me the blue waters of Greece run deeper, even, than an emotional reservoir and creative wellspring. A three month stay during the first Gulf War resulted in…
Post-Election Blues: Seeing Red & Voting Green
So. Here I am, a Kemp Town resident, bleating at the gates of the newly declared Green Socialist People’s Republic of Brighton and Hove to be let in. Not that a change of post code would make much difference. I could move to Liverpool or Glasgow and still be a lost goat chewing down on a rusty old banger…
Post-Prague Reveries
Ahoj! Here I am back from Prague, where esoteric author Cyril Simsa arranged for me to bring The Gaia Chronicles to the Renaissance bower of the Anglo-American University, and troubadours John McKeown and Lucien Zell invited me to read poetry at Pracovna, an ultra-chic café and ‘co-working space’ built from repurposed factory palettes and hub caps. There’s no pic of…
My Prague Spring
I head to Prague tomorrow, on a trip I’m starting to think of as a pilgrimage – a chance to pay homage to the silvery Czech spores that seeded my science fiction fate . . . I’m recalling here my best friend in Canada in grade eight, a Czechoslovakian girl called Nora, with whom I collaborated on a ‘space opera’…
Rook Song Flies the Nest!
Rook Song: Book Two of The Gaia Chronicles my Science Fantasy epic from Jo Fletcher Books launches in Brighton Feb 6th – please come & help it fly the nest in style! Continuing Astra’s adventures, Rook Song opens her world up to many people’s stories – it’s eco-dystopia meets radical resistance, a polyphonic hymn to human diversity. To celebrate accordingly,…