Far from the main tent

Kathleen Winter

Biography: From Sesame Street scripts to newspaper columns, it seems there is little that Winter can’t turn her hand to. This versatility is taken to new levels in her debut novel, Annabel, dealing with the difficult subject of intersexuality. It has been incredibly successful in her native Canada and with her nomination for the Orange Prize 2011, she looks set to make an impact on this side of the Atlantic too.

The Buzz: “Not many authors have tackled issues of intersexuality. Annabel takes a fresh approach: it eschews the dark humour of Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, the gruesomeness of Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory, the epic sweep of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, the inventive intricacy of Ursula K Le Guin'sThe Left Hand of Darkness. This is a quiet, inward-looking treatment of a quiet, inward-looking person who is, in a way, more human than most, being man and woman in one, yet who feels completely alone in a small world.” – The Guardian.

In her own words: “It's always a difficult balance for me to write the honest, unrepeatable flame of a reality in a way that has a structure and a momentum that will make it interesting to a reader. I try to keep my reader in mind, but this is a new skill for me, and I don't want it to drown out the voice of the strange and alive moment burning in the Now.” [AF]

 

Johanna Skibsrud

Biography: Little known poet whose debut novel, The Sentimentalists—the story of a young woman investigating her Vietnam veteran father's past—stunned observers by beating a number of big names to win the Giller Prize, Canada’s most prolific literary award, despite only having a print-run of 800 copies.

The Buzz: “The Sentimentalists is a writer’s book: lyrical, thoughtful, occasionally—if fleetingly—bogged down by the intensity of its focus but compulsively readable. An account of the fog of old age and the fog of war, this is a moving testament to the fragility of the stories we tell about ourselves.” The Financial Times.

In her own words: “My poetry is personal in a way that my fiction is not, even though The Sentimentalists, and much of my short fiction, is inspired either by my own experiences or those of people close to me. Poetry—in that it has the ability to zero in on particular images and ideas—allows a much more concentrated space for emotional reflection and hopefully, from that often deeply personal space, refraction. “ [DH]

 

Benjamin Markovits

Biography: Postgrad student to basketball pro to historical novelist seems an unlikely career move. Indeed the academically-minded Markovits found himself frustrated by his professional basketball career, finally committing once and for all to the written word with his debut novel The Syme Papers. His latest novel, Childish Loves, marks the end of his trilogy on Lord Byron, which was inspired in part by his postgraduate research.

The Buzz: “A hypnotic, impeccably researched, and dazzling glimpse into a psyche which has fascinated the world for nearly 200 years – and will no doubt continue to do so.” The Independent.

In his own words: “My experience playing basketball fed very naturally into my writing. I like to write about the gap between people's view of themselves and what the world makes of them—I'm sympathetically on the side of our self-opinion—and all the guys I played with suffered in one way or another from that gap. They were very good at basketball; but they weren't nearly good enough to satisfy their ambitions, and this seemed to me a pretty general human condition.” [AF]

 

Ida Hattemer-Higgins

Biography: After a somewhat nomadic youth, Hattemer-Higgins settled in Berlin for seven years as a literature student. The city proved to be an inspiring setting for her debut novel The History of History: a surreal, tangled affair which deals with ideas of memory loss – both personal and cultural.

The Buzz: “Berlin takes on a hallucinatory quality as the past intrudes into the present and the nightmare of Nazism is made manifest. Extravagantly ambitious, wide-ranging in reference, and written with real flair, the book has already earned comparisons with Borges and WG Sebald.” The Observer.

In her own words: “I pretty much killed myself over this book. For a long time I had almost no money at all. I lived on seven euros a week, which limited me to a diet of lentils and muesli. I did this to myself not because I am a masochist but because I was convinced that I was working on something of real value and significance. In retrospect I think I was very grandiose. I think often young writers only manage the insane dedication required to write a first novel by means of that sort of grandiosity and it’s a real shame. But if I am totally honest with myself, the sometimes extremely positive, sometimes mixed and sometimes angry reception is no surprise, as the book was written as a deliberate, passionate, somewhat tortured and awkward, but also very urgent provocation. “ [AF]

 

James Attlee

Biography: An arts publishing executive turned writer, Attlee flits in between paeans to apparently unconnected subjects, but makes a success of doing so every time. Nocturne—a magisterial account of his quest to find completely undiluted moonlight, covering hundreds of years of history and every possible aspect of humankind's relationship with the moon—follows similar accounts of American artists Gordon Matta-Clark and the Cowley Road area of Oxford.

The Buzz: "Nocturne becomes more than a series of loosely woven vignettes. Attlee’s observations of the night sky take on a cumulative weight, forming a kind of guide for good living on Earth: late night walks, the pleasures of looking, the spectacular and forgotten thrills of natural phenomena, how we might find profound pleasure in the here and now we have overlooked." The Telegraph.

In his own words: "Moonlight has long been celebrated by writers, artists, poets and musicians for its ability to transform the natural world, evoke emotion and reveal truths that remain hidden during the day. Now that more and more of us live in realms lit-up around the clock by artificial illumination, the light cast by our nearest neighbour has been largely robbed of its power. This is a fundamental change in the experience of life on earth." [DH]

 

Judith Schalansky

Biography: Shalansky was trained in art history and typography – skills she put to great use in her critically acclaimed work, Atlas of Remote Islands. Though this is her first book to be translated into English, she has a larger oeuvre in her native German, from the typographic-manual-cum-love-letter Fraktur Mon Amour to her first literary work, Blau Steht Dir Nicht [Blue Doesn't Suit You], which explores ideas of freedom also found in her Atlas.

The Buzz: “The German Arts Foundation sponsors a prize which simply rewards 'the most beautiful book of the year'; it is hard to imagine that the Atlas was run close for the prize when it won in 2009. It is an utterly exquisite object: atlas as Wunderkammer and bestiary, bound in black cloth and sea-blue card, its fore-edge bright orange, and its pages populated by rare creatures and lost explorers.” – The Guardian

In her own words: “I grew up in East Germany – on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. Before the wall fell, living here meant most of the world was out of reach. I was desperate to travel when I was a girl, but the only way I could escape was through the pages of my atlas. The first time I did this was after watching a television documentary on the Galapagos Islands. I looked for them in the atlas. Then I tried to find my home – the German Democratic Republic. I realised for the first time how small my country was when compared with the rest of the world. My domain ended at the shores of the Baltic Sea, with seemingly insurmountable barriers separating me from the outside world.” [AF]