Courttia Newland is an acclaimed author, scriptwriter, editor and playwright who isn’t afraid to speak his mind. Born and bred in west London, his first novel, The Scholar, was published in 1997 and was an instant success.
Newland was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award 2007, the Alfred Fagon Award 2010 and was recently longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award 2011 for A Book of Blues. Despite his critical success, he explains to Joy Francis why he is avoiding mainstream publishers and his determination to improve the representation of black people in fiction.
A Book of Blues covers music, the 1980s, youth and love. You said that Flambard Press was crazy enough to publish it. Why?
It’s a weird one because I now don’t have a publisher. For a long time it’s been a case of “I love your work. Your writing is so good but I’m not really keen on the story.” That’s why I’m not even going to try mainstream publishers for now as they reject what I do. I think they are not keen because I’m telling a real black story rather than a stereotypical one.
What was the experience like working with a small independent like Flambard Press?
I’ve been lucky in my career to work with great editors. Will Mackie [Flambard’s managing editor] is what I needed for A Book of Blues. Flambard took a holistic approach. It has been my greatest publishing experience and for once I love the cover. I’m not being published now because I’m not presenting the view of black people that they [mainstream publishers] want me to produce. They think my fiction isn’t commercial enough for the people who buy books, who they imagine to be solely white middle class women who wouldn’t read my books. That isn’t true.
Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, which was on the Man Booker shortlist this year, has attracted a mixed response about its representation of the “black underclass” and scepticism that it was heavily promoted as the author is white. What is your view?
Something like Pigeon English gets a six figure advance and the book and author were heavily pushed and promoted. Yet writers such as Esi Edugyan, who was also on the Man Booker shortlist, and Yvette Edwards, who was on the longlist, fell under the radar. Very little has been written about them. There is a disparity in how certain authors are treated. You see very few black writers at the literary festivals including Edinburgh and Manchester. I’m only aware that Jean Binta Breeze is appearing at the latter. I’ve been nominated for awards, yet I haven’t been invited to read at any of them. No one wants to look at the evidence or talk about it.
You are back in the classroom I hear. What are you studying?
I’m doing a PhD in creative writing. The focus is on inner city writing and working class writing. I’m interested in class and how much that impacts on our work. A lot of things that we are seeing in the Black British artistic world are down to class. There is a class war going on in publishing and what we think should and shouldn’t represent black people. I’m unwilling to write a two dimensional version of what it means to be a black person; a version that fits into the mainstream’s point of view with no emotional background. We are being made to present flat characters who represent certain types of things: the African migrant or the street guy who has a heart of gold but does really bad things with no context as to what made him like that. Most of my books fall outside that remit.
What next for you?
Hidden Gems Volume 2, an anthology of black plays that haven’t got as much attention as they deserved. There is a play from Kwame Kwei-Armah in that. I’m going to write a new novel come January 2012. I’ve got the next five or six projects planned. If I could get a foothold in USA that would be interesting. I won’t always write about Britain.
Read an extract from Newland’s short story Beach Boy.
Read an extract from Newland’s short story Beach Boy.
And so it happened almost as soon as he landed, dropped his bags into the guesthouse and was walking along white sand. Twisting ends of locks between his fingers, eyes hidden behind Ray Bans, focused on the curving sheen of her body. She was wearing a pink bikini, sitting with her chin against one knee and smiling as he approached. He matched her enthusiasm, using the slow tick of passing moments to survey his surroundings. The twinkle of ocean, yards away. Dark heads above waves. Donkeys trotting slow like old men. Dhows that rolled at the shoreline, captained by youths he guessed were no older than twenty-one, twenty-five at the most.
He failed to see the group to the right of him until he was almost parallel with them, his shadow stretching across faces. There were six or so. They who he’d been warned about in his guide book, by the friends he’d made in Nairobi and the porter that carried his bags. Some were chewing miraa, what he knew back home as cat. Others lay with their eyes closed while a few passed a joint. Most had shoulder-length locks like him, although the ends were tinged blonde and their skin glowed from trapped sunlight in a way his never had. Their eyes were white and watchful, all on him.
He released the lock he’d been twisting and raised his hand in the universal gesture of peace.
©Copyright Courttia Newland 2011
