Hannah Lowe and Monique Roffey made Royal Society of Literature Fellows

August 3, 2022 Intern BlakeFriedmann

We are delighted that both Hannah Lowe and Monique Roffey have been elected as fellows for the Royal Society of Literature. This honour comes after an extraordinary year for both writers, with Hannah winning the Costa Book of the Year Award in February for her poetry collection THE KIDS, and Monique’s novel THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH (also a Costa Book of the Year Award winner, winning in 2020) going from strength to strength, selling more than 100,000 UK copies and most recently being published by Knopf in the USA and as part of the Vintage Earth series in the UK. The novel has also been optioned for film by Dorothy Street Pictures.

Hannah and Monique became fellows in July, along with 148 other writers and supporters of literature elected between 2020 and 2022. They signed their names in the historic roll book at an event held at Battersea Arts Centre. Monique used author Jean Rhys’ pen to sign, whilst Hannah used Andrea Levy’s as ‘her writing made me want to write’.

The Royal Society of Literature is the UK’s largest charity for the advancement of literature, and to be nominated as a fellow, a writer must have published or produced two works of outstanding literary merit, and nominations must be made by two fellows or honorary fellows. Other writers made fellows this year include Michaela Coel, Russell T. Davies, Sulaiman Addonia and Lemn Sissay.

Daljit Nagra, chair of the Royal Society of Literature, said: ‘We at the RSL are a community of readers and writers coming together for the advancement of literature, bringing our multiple experiences and perspectives to bear on some of the biggest questions of our times. Fellowship isn’t just an honour bestowed to a writer by their peers; being a fellow gives you the opportunity to show what literature can do to change all our lives.

‘Our fellows inform the work we do, and our summer party is a joyous celebration of the writers who enrich our nations with the cultural wealth of their generous literature. I am delighted to be chair of an organisation that shows the extraordinary and diverse excellence of writing in the UK, and makes it possible for us to create a society we want to live in.’

Newly elected president of the Royal Society of Literature, Bernardine Evaristo, added: ‘Storytelling is at the heart of who we are as humans – it is how we understand, contextualise, mirror, examine, challenge, entertain and imagine life from multiple experiences and perspectives. We all deserve to be active and equal participants in the production and consumption of literature that is as wide-ranging as ourselves.’

About Hannah Lowe

Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. Her 2021 poetry collection, THE KIDS, won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2021. THE KIDS also won the Costa Poetry Award 2021, was shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Autumn 2021 and an Irish Times and Guardian poetry book of the year.

Her first book-length collection, CHICK, won the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize and was selected for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion. Her second full-length collection, CHAN, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016, followed by a pamphlet, THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (Out-Spoken Press) in 2019. Her prose memoir, LONG TIME NO SEE, exploring her relationship with her half-Chinese, half-Jamaican immigrant father, was published by Periscope in 2014.

Visit Hannah’s website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

About Monique Roffey
Monique Roffey is an award-winning novelist who divides her time between Trinidad and London. HOUSE OF ASHES (Scribner UK) was shortlisted for the Costa and the BOCAS Prize. ARCHIPELAGO, winner of the OCM BOCAS prize for Caribbean Literature, was published by Scribner in the UK, Viking in the US, and translated into five languages. Her second novel THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYCLE was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Encore Prize, among other accolades, and film/TV rights have been optioned. THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH won the Costa Prize as well as receiving many other prize nominations and international rights deals.

Visit Monique’s website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Praise for Hannah Lowe
‘Here is a poet with a commanding style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic.’ – Penelope Shuttle

‘Lowe’s poetry is vibrant and sensual.’ – Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Poetry Review

‘A joy to read.’ – Liz Berry

‘Always, we are in the hands of Lowe's singular, effortless voice, and reminded that all good education should be an education in class, in the legacies and histories of empire and in the self.’ – Andrew McMillan, Poetry Book Society Bulletin

Praise for Monique Roffey
‘Monique Roffey is a unique talent and most daring and versatile of writers. I never know what to expect and I’m never disappointed.’ – Bernardine Evaristo

'Monique Roffey is a writer of verve, vibrancy and compassion, and her work is always a joy to read.' – Sarah Hall

‘Monique Roffey has established herself as a fearless writer with her choices of subject and her visceral style.’ – The Guardian

‘One of our most exciting new Caribbean voices.’ – A.L. Kenn

Costa Book of the Year Win for THE KIDS by Hannah Lowe

February 3, 2022 Blake Friedmann

Hannah Lowe has won the Costa Book of the Year with her collection, THE KIDS, published by Bloodaxe Books. The Costa Book of the Year is chosen from the winners of the individual Costa Award categories, and Hannah was announced as winner at an in-person ceremony in London last night.

Chair of Judges, Reeta Chakrabarti, said THE KIDS is ‘a book to fall in love with’, ‘joyous, warm and completely universal.’ She went on to say ‘We were looking for the most enjoyable book, the most accessible book, the book that you would most want to pass on to other people. And the winner was, for all of us, fresh and immediate, it spoke very directly to everybody. It has a universality to it – in a simple way, because everybody’s been to school.’

Reporting on the win, BBC Arts Correspondent Rebecca Jones described THE KIDS as ‘thoroughly modern… engaging and entertaining too… [The sonnets] offer a particularly fascinating glimpse into Lowe's experience teaching English at an inner-city London sixth form in the 2000s… The sonnet, with its 14 lines and strict rhyme scheme, dates back centuries. But in this collection, Hannah Lowe has taken it to unexpected places – with richly rewarding results.’

Lowe took home the Costa Poetry Award earlier this year, and her collection garnered high praise from the Costa Poetry Award judges, Rishi Dastidar, Ian Duhig and Maya Jaggi, who said: ‘THE KIDS is the real deal. A page turner about the experience of teaching and being taught, it made us want to punch the air with joy... A contemporary book that buzzes with life while re-energising the sonnet that Shakespeare would recognise. All readers will find something of themselves here.'

THE KIDS was also shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Autumn 2021 and an Irish Times and Guardian poetry book of the year. It was widely acclaimed – see some of the praise below.

THE KIDS is a collection of compassionate and energetic sonnets, fictionalised portraits of the students Hannah nurtured in her decade as a teacher in inner-city London. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. Across these deeply felt poems, Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour. Social class, gender and race – and their fundamental intersection with education – are investigated with an ever-critical and introspective eye. These boisterous and musical poems explore what it is to be taught, to learn and to teach.

About Hannah Lowe

Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. Her first book-length collection CHICK (Bloodaxe, 2013) won the 2015 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize and was selected for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion. Her second full-length collection, CHAN, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016, followed by a pamphlet, THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (Out-Spoken Press) in 2019. Her prose memoir, LONG TIME NO SEE, exploring her relationship with her half-Chinese, half-Jamaican immigrant father, was published by Periscope in 2014.

Visit Hannah’s website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram

Praise for THE KIDS

‘These sequences of stories are a refreshing update to THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE and TO SIR WITH LOVE. Each of Lowe’s sonnets is a blackboard chalked with the tales of earnest teachers, of cheeky and lovable students, of being mentored to become a poet and of motherhood and learning to instruct again. Lowe makes the sonnet exciting for our age through its urgent, its compassionate, its wonderfully humorous address of the personal and the social.’ – Daljit Nagra

‘A gorgeous, technically impressive, emotional, generous journey she took us on!! Quite how she condenses so much of living, and loving, and Britain, and class and race and single life and childhood and teenhood and heartbreak and parenthood in this slim thing is beyond me. Just one of those books that you can give to a 12-year-old and an 82-year-old and say: here is life, captured briefly, truly, on the page… She is so easy with the form, you don’t even notice how technically brilliant they are. They are so human and generous and clever... Buy it, borrow it, but however you lay your hands, a read of this collection is worth your time and heart.’ – Jessie Burton, Instagram

‘An introspective book of modern sonnets… This is a playful yet moving collection that will make the reader frown and laugh, sometimes both at once.’ – Mary Jean Chan, The Guardian, ‘The Best Recent Poetry’

‘Hannah Lowe's THE KIDS, inspired by her time teaching in an inner London sixth form, is a series of sonnets full of joy. The book is generous in its compassion, and in love with the idea of learning, in the classroom and outside it.’ – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian, ‘Best poetry books of 2021’

‘Hannah Lowe's brilliant and entertaining book of sonnets, THE KIDS, is one of the most humorous and tender collections of recent times.’ – Sean Hewitt, The Irish Times, ‘Best poetry of 2021’

‘At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets is her students. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self in the riotous 80s and her small son growing up in contemporary London. These are deeply felt poems interrogating the acts of teaching and learning, class, gender and race with empathy and humour. Boisterous and musical, these poems explore and explode the universal experience of what it is to be taught, and to teach, and reach out to the child within us all.’ – Poetry Book Society

‘While THE KIDS doesn’t shy away from asking tough questions about education, it shows real fondness for the kids themselves and their uplifting thirst for learning.’ – Hayley Jarvis, Brunel University

‘The poems in THE KIDS fizz and chat with all the vitality and longing of the classes they conjure. Funny, moving, sometimes painful and always questioning, they capture teachers and their students learning life from each other in profound and unexpected ways. A joy to read.’ – Liz Berry

‘This book reads very much like a labour of love. Anyone who commits to writing, and asks the reader to commit to reading, 66 sonnets has got to have plenty to say. These poems never flinch and the best of them… leave us caring for the kids as much as she does.’ – Carl Tomlinson, Poetry News, ‘Best poetry books of the year 2021’

'Lowe’s social conscience, grounded register and frank humanity recall Tony Harrison...’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph

'THE KIDS asks awkward questions about institutionalized education, but retains an unshakable faith in the kids and the joy they derive from learning and from their world and, because of this, it imagines a bright future.’ – John Field

‘Hannah Lowe’s third full-length collection THE KIDS is a book of loose, light-touch sonnets about growing up and growing old, parents and children, teaching and learning.’ – Andy Croft, Morning Star

‘Lowe’s skill at working with traditional forms has been strongly in evidence from her debut collection CHICK onwards. She has an easy, conversational take on the iambic pentameter line, and is skilled at finding both full and slant rhymes that don’t come across as forced. This results in poems that feel contemporary, yet still have a sense of the language being heightened into song.’ – Alan Buckley, The Friday Poem

‘CHICK was a hard act to follow. In this painfully aware, complex and very dynamic collection, Hannah Lowe has more than succeeded. Anyone entering teaching would do well to read it. As would everyone else.’ – Beth McDonough, Dundee University Review of the Arts

HANNAH LOWE’S MEMOIR LONG TIME NO SEE TO BE BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK!

July 24, 2015 Hattie Grunewald

Hannah Lowe’s LONG TIME NO SEE, published in the UK by Periscope, will be BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week next week. The first episode will be broadcast at 09.45 a.m. on Monday 27 July and the last episode will go out on Friday. An accomplished poet and performer, Hannah Lowe will be reading her own work.

Hannah’s memoir was listed for Guardian Hottest Caribbean Reads and picked as an Observer Holiday Read 2015. Poet Malika Booker called it ‘heartbreakingly tender, poignant and honest’ and Kerry Young, author of PAO and GLORIA said the following: ‘Sometimes we don’t cherish what we have until it’s gone. Such is the case with Hannah Lowe’s beautifully woven tale of father and daughter – a half-remembered, half-imagined reminder that our stories begin long before we are born, and never end.’

Hannah was chosen for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets List 2014. Her debut poetry collection, CHICK (Bloodaxe, 2013), also about her father, was called ‘outstanding, unputdownable’ by John Glenday, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, The Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry 2014 and most recently the Michael Murphy Award. Penelope Shuttle described her as ‘as a poet with a commanding style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic’ – a voice that comes through in her moving memoir too.

Hannah’s father, Chick, a half-Chinese, half-black Jamaican immigrant, worked long hours at night to support his family – except Chick was no ordinary working man. A legendary gambler, he would vanish into the shadows of East London to win at cards or dice, returning during the daylight hours to greet the daughter whose love and respect he courted.

In this memoir, Hannah calls forth the unstable world of card sharps, confidence men and small-time criminals that eventually took its toll on Chick. She evokes her father’s Jamaica, where he learned his formidable skills, and her own coming of age in a changing Britain. LONG TIME NO SEE speaks eloquently of love and its absence, regret and compassion, and the struggle to know oneself.

Visit Hannah’s blog and follow her on Twitter.

Hannah Lowe shortlisted for Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize

September 27, 2013 Blake Friedmann

Hannah Lowe's CHICK has been shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize - one of the most influential and established prizes in the UK for a first book of poems. Hannah features on the shortlist alongside four other poets, including Emily Berry and Dan O'Brien. Now in its second year of funding by The Fenton Arts Trust, the winner of the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize will be announced at the start of the 25th Aldeburgh International Poetry Festival on Friday 8 November 2013.

Hannah was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The winner of the £5000 prize will be announced in a ceremony at the South Bank Centre on 1 October. CHICK is published by Bloodaxe Books.

Hannah is also performing at a benefit for James Berry on 27 September, at 7pm at The Tabernacle, London. Tickets cost £45 including entertainment and food buffet and money raised goes to the James Berry Trust and the Alzheimer's Society. James was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease nine years ago and has been in residential care for over two years.

Hannah Lowe's memoir LONG TIME NO SEE was recently acquired by Telegram, and will be published July 2014.

Praise for CHICK:

'CHICK opens with a powerful sequence of poems centred around the poet's memories of her Chinese/black Jamaican father - a complex, larger than life character who came to London in the late 40s and eked out a living as, among other things, a gambler. But the book is very much more than a personal reminiscence and family history. This is a collection cross-hatched with myth and history, a hymn to London as much as to its characters. Though all the poems have a strong, vividly cinematographic line, they are also beautifully lyrical - sung stories, offering us the glimpsed lives of strangers and lovers. But however poignant and moving it may be, the collection remains doggedly celebratory of life itself, of people and place, loved and remembered. Each poem takes us a little further into the mystery of lives in a world that is as incomprehensible as it is unforgettable. This is an outstanding, unputdownable first collection' - John Glenday.

'Here is a poet with a commanding style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic. These are poems springing from the page with vitality, rue and insight. Her elegies are restrained and devastating. An extraordinary debut' - Penelope Shuttle.

'CHICK is an unforgettable book. In an age where blurby superlatives compete on debut book covers, this one has an edge: it is about someone, namely the poet's late father, from whose name it takes its title. The reader approaches the book not only as a set of poems but as a narrative with a fascinating central character. The early poems about him are riveting. [The poem] 'Say', which exploits understatement to the full, is remarkable, and heartbreaking. And did I like the poet? Yes, enormously. You couldn't not. She is there as a child, and a young, vulnerable adult, and then as a grown woman lamenting her own unfatherly father with compassion, but without sentiment.' - Helena Nelson, Magma

'A notable achievement, particularly in a first book a sustained elegiac sequence, raw, but consistently well-wrought. Lowe's poetry is vibrant and sensual.' - Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Poetry Review

Hannah Lowe’s poetry collection CHICK shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Prize.

July 9, 2013 Blake Friedmann

A panel headed by Jeanette Winterson, who is joined by the poets Paul Farley and Sheenagh Pugh, the actor Samuel West and journalist David Mills have included Hannah Lowe's CHICK in the shortlist for the £5,000 Best First Collection prize. Hannah's collection is published by Bloodaxe Books.

Previous winners have included Sam Riviere's 81 Austerities and Kid by Simon Armitage.

The awards will be announced at a ceremony in London's Southbank Centre on 1 October 2013.

Praise for CHICK:
'CHICK opens with a powerful sequence of poems centred around the poet's memories of her Chinese/black Jamaican father - a complex, larger than life character who came to London in the late 40s and eked out a living as, among other things, a gambler. But the book is very much more than a personal reminiscence and family history. This is a collection cross-hatched with myth and history, a hymn to London as much as to its characters. Though all the poems have a strong, vividly cinematographic line, they are also beautifully lyrical - sung stories, offering us the glimpsed lives of strangers and lovers. But however poignant and moving it may be, the collection remains doggedly celebratory of life itself, of people and place, loved and remembered. Each poem takes us a little further into the mystery of lives in a world that is as incomprehensible as it is unforgettable. This is an outstanding, unputdownable first collection' - John Glenday.

'CHICK is an unforgettable book. In an age where blurby superlatives compete on debut book covers, this one has an edge: it is about someone, namely the poet's late father, from whose name it takes its title. …The reader approaches the book not only as a set of poems but as a narrative with a fascinating central character. …The early poems about him are riveting. … [The poem] 'Say', which exploits understatement to the full, is remarkable, and heartbreaking. … And did I like the poet? Yes, enormously. You couldn't not. She is there as a child, and a young, vulnerable adult, and then as a grown woman lamenting her own unfatherly father with compassion, but without sentiment.' - Helena Nelson, Magma

'A notable achievement, particularly in a first book … a sustained elegiac sequence, raw, but consistently well-wrought. … Lowe's poetry is vibrant and sensual.' - Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Poetry Review

Links to some of Hannah's blogs and readings:

Hannah's blog: www.hannahlowe.org/blog/

Video of Hannah reading, from the Bloodaxe site: http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852249609

Video of the Edinburgh World Writers' debate, with address by Hannah Lowe at the beginning and responses to questions re memoir:
http://www.edinburghworldwritersconference.org/national-literature/marlon-james-a-national-literature/

Hannah's blog about the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference:
http://www.edinburghworldwritersconference.org/national-literature/why-investigate-the-question-of-a-national-literature-hannah-lowe-blogs-from-ewwc-trinidad/

http://paperbased.org/2013/06/06/chick-by-hannah-lowe/

http://www.camdenreview.com/reviews/books/against-the-odds-chick-by-hannah-lowe-bloodaxe-books

http://www.apoemandapint.co.uk/images/reviews/hannahlowe.htm

http://www.bocaslitfest.com/2013/father-figures-colin-grant-and-hannah-lowe/

http://www.susumba.com/books/reviews/literary-patchwork-jamaican-chinese-experience

http://grasmerepoetry.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/w-n-herbert-and-hannah-lowe-21st-may-2013/