Tenth Anniversary Celebrations in October
Thursday, 1st October 2009
Taken from the Bookseller, 23 September 2009
‘Birmingham-based indie Tindal Street Press is celebrating its first decade “defying all odds” with two events next month, including one that will celebrate its three Booker nominations.
Tindal Street has had one Man Booker shortlisting – for Clare Morrall’s Astonishing Splashes of Colour – and two longlistings – Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost and Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress. In its ten years Tindal Street Press has published 48 fiction titles, of which 12 have been listed for national prizes, some multiple listees. Other accolades include an Orange Prize nomination and a Costa Book Prize award winner.
At Birmingham’s Library Theatre on 8th October, the publisher celebrates these three female authors with a selection of readings and in discussion with each other and Ion Trewin, literary director of the Man Booker Prizes. This will be part of the Birmingham Book Festival.
A week earlier, at the Custard Factory, the group will launch Roads Ahead, a new anthology of short stories chosen and introduced by O’Flynn. Tindal Street said it expected to see the authors selected to be “published widely over the next decade”.
The party takes place in the same venue in which Tindal Street’s first ever book Hard Shoulder was launched in 1999 – another anthology of young writers that won the Raymond Williams Prize and launched the careers of several writers and editors.
Co-founder and publishing director Alan Mahar said: “From our Custard Factory office a small team of three for most of that time has achieved a reputation for literary quality that is the envy of many larger publishers… We’re enormously proud of the review coverage and prize-listing achieved by our strong and varied list of regional fiction. Our commitment to diversity in publishing is demonstrated with authors such as E. A. Markham and Austin Clarke – and we’re not afraid of publishing with a regional focus or short stories. And, unlike this year’s Man Booker shortlist, we’ve always championed contemporary realism.”
Tindal Street Press is a not-for-profit limited company, which is funded by the Arts Council England and Birmingham City Council. The publisher has also relaunched their website as a space for readers to meet writers www.tindalstreet.co.uk.’
