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To Hell with Prizes

Wed, Feb 17, 2010

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We’re pleased to announce the shortlist for the inaugural To Hell with Prizes literary award:

A MAN OF DIMINISHED STATURE by Simon Hattenstone, submitted by Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates

BED by David Whitehouse, submitted by Cathryn Summerhayes at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment

GIRL NINETY-NINE by Andy P. Jones, submitted by Jon Elek at AP Watt

GWUPYGRUBYNUDNYLAND by Ben Hopkins, submitted by Patrick Walsh at Conville and Walsh

HOW IT ENDS by Sara Langham, submitted by Lucy Luck at Lucy Luck Associates

The winner will be announced at the award ceremony on Sunday 18 April. The prize is £5,000 and a To Hell with Publishing limited edition, and the obvious hope is that the real prize for the author and agent will be a publishing deal.

About To Hell with Prizes

This award is for those authors who have cleared the first hurdle and found themselves agents but are yet to be published, and for those agents who have on their desk a manuscript which epitomises why they went into the business. Luckily there are plenty of prizes out there for first novels, but we wanted to look at it from an agent’s perspective. What about those manuscripts that have captured their imagination and made them feel proud of the talent they have discovered? Is there a way that we can help quicken the progress of one of these writers? To Hell with Prizes is our answer.

The 2010 judging panel represents the many influential areas in publishing and the wider arts world: playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, Canongate editor Francis Bickmore, Waterstone’s online editor Greg Eden, journalist India Knight, and author David Peace. We asked UK literary agents to hone their submission to one manuscript per agency to ensure a high standard of entry and create an equal playing field between all agencies large and small.

The award ceremony will be held on Sunday 18 April, just before the London Book Fair 2010.

To Hell with the Lighthouse

Thu, Feb 11, 2010

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To Hell with the Lighthouse
4 Denmark Street – WC2H 8LP
Monday 15 February
8pm-2am

To Hell with Publishing is thrilled to announce a new monthly literary night.

This Monday we’ll be hosting acclaimed poet Ruth Padel who’ll be reading a couple of poems and an extract from her debut novel Where the Serpent Lives. After planning the launches of our annual prize for first fiction and new list To Hell with First Novels, we’re excited to be celebrating a debut novel away from our desks and with a drink in our hands. She’ll be joined by another debut novelist, the journalist and ex-model Gavin James Bower who’ll be reading a short story based on the publication last year of his novel Dazed and Aroused.

It’ll be held at Peter Parker’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Club, formally the legendary Regent Sound Studios, where The Rolling Stones recorded their first album; The Kinks recorded ‘You Really Got Me’; Black Sabbath recorded ‘Paranoid’; and Elton John failed an audition when he was still going under his real name of Reg Dwight. More details including those of the cheap drinks on offer here.

We’re hoping to do away with the stuffiness of some traditional readings and bring a celebratory attitude to books so while the event will start at 7.30pm, with readings until around 10.30pm, we’ll have DJ sets until 2am.

We hope you’ll join us there.

Lucy Langdon on The Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico

Mon, Feb 8, 2010

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A truly delightful read. Light and cheerful, but serious and peculiar at the same time. I’ve read this book many times in my life and it never fails to lift me.

The heroine, Mouche, is desperate for comfort and very nearly resorts to the time honoured solution of suicide. However, she is brought back from the brink by an intriguing range of fantastical characters- the seven puppets and their elusive master. Times are still tough, but Mouche now has a purpose and her honest determination to fulfil it as well as possible is a heartwarming and charming experience.

The writing and imagery is divine. The flickering characters of these seven dolls provide an outline for the plot; the ropes of a boxing ring for our two mismatched lovers to fight their unique fight. We are fooled, along with Mouche, into taking these boundaries as real and defined whenever they shimmer into existence. Of course, the puppeteer holds all the strings, although Gallico goes a very long way towards convincing us otherwise.

Lucy Langdon on A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Mon, Feb 8, 2010

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The hardback dust cover of this hand-achingly huge novel is shot through with fuscia bullet holes, and that’s a bit how you’ll feel when you read it: emotionally punctured but simultaneously tickled a heartwarming shade of pink.

A son narrates the story of his dad, ‘the most hated man in Australia’, and his uncle, ‘the most loved man in Australia’. It’s a long read, but it whips along and you’ll come out wanting more. If you like novels that drag you inside the characters’ heads and shine torches in places you haven’t even explored inside your own, read this book. ‘Empathy’ doesn’t come close to describing how invested I felt in the leads by the inevitably ‘back-to-reality’ ending.

The worrying thing? These are some seriously messed up characters. In some ways, it’s a treacherous read: convictions of immortality, self-indulgent fantasies, over-thinking, the very temptation of insanity and despair bellow from the pages, beckoning you closer. However, Toltz’s genius isn’t just that he makes you spot these traits in yourself, but that he makes you point and laugh at them on sighting.

Yes, it’s a self-indulgently long book (one of those I wish I had the guts to wield a cleaver on), and yes, from time to time, it makes you want to tear out the pages and try to suffocate yourself with them, but did I love it? Absolutely.

Richard Milward on The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

Mon, Feb 8, 2010

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The literary equivalent of having a bad trip on your hols in 1930s Persia, Sadegh Hedayat’s novel The Blind Owl is a heady, cannibalistic feast for the senses. Narrated by an opium-smoking necrophilia-enthusiast, the book is possibly the most horrific love story ever written, following a painter of pen-cases’ descent into psychosis over a woman whose mouth tastes like ‘the stub-end of a cucumber’. While his fancy-lady may not sound like the greatest catch, the narrator has his own eccentricities too; for example his morbid preoccupation with death, a penchant for sniffing corpses, as well as a wife he enjoys calling ‘the bitch’.

The best thing about reading The Blind Owl is, now and again, you get the feeling you’re losing your mind, too. Throughout, you find passages loaded with a sinister sort of deja vu, whereby the same mystical sentences get repeated over and over, like the book’s somehow putting a powerful hex on you, against your will. Recurring motifs like ‘a cypress tree, a bottle of snake-poisoned wine, and blue flowers of morning glory’ parade through your brain like flesh-eating worms.

It may come as no surprise that Hedayat topped himself not long after penning his masterpiece. The Blind Owl is not the cheeriest of books, and it’s certainly not to be confused with Jill Tomlinson’s playschool kiddie classic, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark. Hedayat’s owl may well make you scared of the dark, though. It may even make you scared of the light. But what’s for certain, you’ll never look at the cucumbers in Sainsbury’s the same way ever again. Or the bottles of wine. Or the flowers. Or the knives.

To Hell with Prizes

Fri, Jan 22, 2010

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We’re pleased to announce the judging panel for the inaugural To Hell with Prizes literary award.

To reinforce our support for debut writers, we are launching a prize to award to an unpublished novel. This award is for those authors who have cleared the first hurdle and found themselves agents but are yet to be published, and for those agents who have on their desk a manuscript which epitomises why they went into the business.

Luckily there are plenty of prizes out there for first novels, but we wanted to look at it from an agent’s perspective. What about those manuscripts that have captured their imagination and made them feel proud of the talent they have discovered? Is there a way that we can help quicken the progress of one of these writers? To Hell with Novels is our answer.

UK agents were asked to hone their submission to one manuscript per agency to ensure a high standard of entry and also create an equal playing field between all agencies large and small.

The Award Ceremony will be on Sunday, April 18th just before the London Book Fair 2010. The prize will be £5,000 and a To Hell with Publishing limited edition. The obvious hope is that the real prize for the author and agent will be a publishing deal.

This year’s panel is:

Francis Bickmore
Senior Editor at Canongate

Greg Eden
Online editor at Waterstone’s

India Knight
Journalist and author

Kwame Kwei-Armah
Actor, playwright, singer and broadcaster

David Peace
Author

About To Hell with Publishing:
To Hell with Publishing is Laurence Johns, Lucy Owen, Dean Ricketts and Emma Young. Dean, founder of the Watch-men Agency, and Laurence, rare-book dealer, started the small press To Hell with Publishing in 2006. We create limited editions, produce a literary journal To Hell with Journals and will be launching our new list To Hell with First Novels with The Cuckoo Boy.

The shortlist will be announced in February and the winner at an award’s ceremony on Sunday, 18th April.

To Hell with Christmas

Fri, Jan 22, 2010

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We’d like to say a massive thanks to everyone who made it to the L-13 gallery for our Christmas party, and particularly our readers:

actor Tom Godwin

author of After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, and John Llewellyn Rhys prize winner Evie Wyld

author of God’s Own Country, Betty Trask Award winner and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Ross Raisin

and the Ginger Light

To Hell with Books launch party

Thu, Dec 10, 2009

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Because the hangover won’t last forever, here are some photos of the night.

To Hell with Books: STOP THE PRESS!! WE OPEN AN INDY BOOKSHOP

Wed, Nov 25, 2009

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“Because I’d rather be reading something good”

Have you worn out the spines on your Dan Browns, completed your Katie Price library and quoted Martine McCutcheon’s best sentences to your friends that one too many times? It’s time, dear readers, for some help.

To Hell with Publishing is launching an independent bookshop:

To Hell with Books

10 Woburn Walk, WC1H 0JL

Wednesday 9th December

The Shop

To Hell with Books will stock a range of signed editions of our favourite new quality fiction as well as some very special limited editions. We’ll be sharing the space with our publishing house and will also have To Hell with Publishing books and To Hell with Journals available to buy. You’ll know you can pick up anything from our shelves and it’ll be good. And we’ll be exhibiting original artworks and prints by authors or artists with a literary connection.

The Website

www.tohellwithbooks.com will be going live on the 9th and as well as selling great books, and only great books, the website will be the go-to place to find out about interesting literary events first, as well as hosting monthly guest spots with friends from across the publishing industry introducing us to their favourite books.

We think the future of buying books will be all about publishers engaging directly with readers and recommending great books that they’re genuinely passionate about, so we want to give readers a boutique shopping experience with advice, if they want it, that’s personal to them.

The Launch Party

We’d love you to join us for our launch on Wednesday 9th December from 6pm-9pm where we’ll be hosting a one night only pop-up bookstore selling intelligent books and records with soul and wit from To Hell with Publishing, Fuel Publishing, Unit Editions and Jonny Trunk – all at special prices.

There will be signed copies, bottles of beer and Jake Chapman will be signing his latest novel (from 7-8pm).

Book Heaven @ To Hell with Books

The Fuel/Unit/Trunk Pop-Up Bookstore at
To Hell with Books
10 Woburn Walk
London
WC1H 0JL

COME DOWN AND MEET THE MAN

Fri, Oct 30, 2009

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To Hell with Publishing & AMUTI 23

are proud to invite you to the

Special Launch Event

For

Kevin Cummins’

Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain

LIMITED EDITION

Wednesday 11^th of November

6.00pm – 9.00pm

@

AMUTI 23

23 Cecil Court, London, WC2N 4EZ

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This event will be you last chance to purchase your copy at the special introductory price of £250